Hats off: The Decline of East German Industry

and how communities are bouncing back

Former Hat Factory in Guben. Img: Stadt Guben

I tried on many different hats today. My eyes first fell on a bright red cloche that instantly makes any female wearer look like a ‘New Woman’ from the 1920s. Next, it was a plaid flat cap. Then a bowler, and then a fedora. I felt an imposter in each one. They were all powerfully evocative of the historical era, geography, gender and class they are associated with. It was like trying on a piece of a time or context that doesn’t fit. They all felt like relics from a past long gone.

I’m not usually a big hat wearer. I guess few people are these days. But I had come to a place where it is difficult to avoid hats: the town of Guben on the German-Polish border. Guben is famous for many things. It’s the birthplace of a certain historian called Katja Hoyer, for example. It’s also a divided town, split since 1945 into a German and a Polish part by the River Neisse. It’s also the birthplace of Wilhelm Pieck, first and only president of East Germany. And it was once Germany’s foremost producer of hats.

What sounds like a trivial thing really wasn’t once upon a time. Look at any historical photo from the last two centuries, and chances are, you’ll see plenty of people wearing hats in it. The one that springs to mind for me is the picture taken on 1 August 1914 in Berlin when the crowds waited for Kaiser Wilhelm to come out and declare war on Russia. It’s often used to illustrate the idea that there was war euphoria in 1914, but I always get distracted by all the hats on display.

Crowds cheering Kaiser Wilhelm II on the balcony of the Berliner Schloss after the German Government announced the order to mobilise and declared war on Russia, 1 August 1914. Img: Imperial War Museum, Q 81739.

Of those, many would have been produced in Guben. The hat company situated there was Europe’s most dominant hat producer during its heyday, covering nearly two-thirds of the German demand alone.