What did you bring to your first day of elementary school? In Germany, many children are gifted a Schultüte (“school bag/cone”) or Zuckertüte (“sugar bag/cone”), a cone filled with treats, to sweeten a child’s (perhaps nerve-wracking) first day. The tradition dates back to at least the 1700s, when it was practiced mostly in what is now central Germany. Today, children from all over Germany carry these cones to school, each filled with whatever the family chose and could afford; if unable to obtain sweets and toys, families would put potatoes, or whatever else they could, in, in an effort to help their child feel celebrated. Folklore expert Christiane Cantauw commented to the BBC on the function of the cone as a rite of passage, which marks both the entrance of the child into this new role and phase of life, and the continuation of the child’s importance within the family unit.1
The practice is associated with a perhaps-apocryphal Jewish origin, taking inspiration from a line of Psalm 119, which translates to “your words in my mouth are sweeter than honey” — in this context, emphasizing the importance of learning, and linking the sweet treats in the cone to the sweetness of learning. Multiple sources likewise cite a Jewish tradition wherein the child (in those days, a boy) would lick honey off letters for the first day attending a Cheder, and a German rabbi notes that, relatedly, teachers would give students sweets on their first day.23 The link between these Jewish customs and the German Schultüte may not be substantiated, but the tradition certainly was, and is, carried down to German-Jewish children. Our Permanent Collection at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust is home to multiple photographs depicting German-Jewish children carrying these Schultüten before the Holocaust.
Werner Cohn of Greifswald, Germany was one of these students. An inscription on the photograph’s verso, in pencil, suggests the photograph was either taken on, or that his first day of school (if not the same day) was September 18, 1928. He carries a sturdy, smaller cone for his first day of school. His cone features a figure holding an umbrella, and appears to match his outfit well. He also carries a backpack (Schulranzen) and a crossbody bag, as do several of the other children depicted in our Collection’s examples. The photograph is posed; he stands indoors, by a chair, and a studio imprint in the bottom-right corner of the recto tells us it was likely taken in a studio. If accurate, this suggests Werner’s family, like many German families today, took the first day of school very seriously – going through the effort to use a studio, and doing so in order to mark the day for future memories.
A more spontaneous snapshot, the following photograph of Fanny Frank holding hands with another child as they walk, presumably to or from school, allows us to compare two Schültuten: one is narrower and illustrated with botanicals, the other, much larger and featuring different decorations, including a bow likely drawn on. Both children wear hats and coats, indicating it may have been a cold first day, likely in Landsberg, Germany in 1928 or 1929, when Fanny would have been six or seven.
Fanny Frank managed to escape Germany; Fanny, later Nurit Schaumberger then Nurit Ron, arrived in Palestine in 1939 and became a Palestinian citizen in 1945. Fanny Frank married Paul Schaumberger March 25, 1947 in Givatayim. She became a U.S. citizen in 1958 and died January 1, 1989.
Some children were lucky enough to get multiple Schultüten. Blima Rock got two, each not much smaller than she was at the time, decorated similarly – possibly identically – to the one carried by the child on the right side of the previous photograph. Blima is smiling, posing for the photograph outdoors, one cone balanced in her arm and one leaning against the ground. The photograph is likely from 1929 or 1930, as Blima was born in 1923; originally from Poland, her family moved to Dresden the same year as Blima’s birth, and later to Berlin, though Blima and her sister Ellen spent a number of years in Poland with their grandparents after their father was beaten up. The family left for the U.S. in 1938.
The latest photograph in this series, this studio portrait of Reni Horowitz likely dates to the last year before the Holocaust when Jewish children could attend public German schools. Reni was born in 1931, so this photograph was likely taken in 1937 or 1938. Five years after a 1933 edict strictly limiting Jewish enrollment to 5%, and new Jewish enrollment to 1.5%, a November 1938 law banned Jewish children from attending public schools altogether. It
is unknown if Reni attended a public school or a Jewish school (many children who previously had, or would have, attended public school, took classes at Jewish schools – often newly instituted for the purpose); but if taken in 1938, it is possible that she had to leave school soon after this photograph was taken. She recalls bullying of Jewish students by Christian German children as early as 1936, and managed to immigrate to the US with her parents via Russia – joining her two siblings, who had been sent in 1937 and 1938.
These photographs help tell the stories of each individual depicted in them, and at the same time they hint at the broader themes of – and sometimes uncertain borders between – assimilation, integration, and cultural exchange and interdependency. The Schultüte, gifted to German children of all races and religions today, is a meaningful, if simple, cultural and historical object, with the potential to speak to the diversity of experiences lived by those who carry them, and of their families.
1 Sophie Hardoch, “Why Germans celebrate school with a cardboard cone,” BBC (London), 5 December 2021, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211201-the-german-tradition-that-calms-school-anxiety.
2 Elke Wiitch, “Die Zuckertüte und ihr jüdischer Ursprung,” Jüdische Allgemeine (Berlin), 2 August 2016, https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/unsere-woche/suesses-zum-schulbeginn/.
3 Rabbi Prof. David Golinken, “Shavuot: Torah Sweet as Honey,” The Schechter Institutes, Inc., 13 May 2002, https://schechter.edu/shavuot-torah-as-sweet-as-honey/.