Appearances and reality : Clothing and political identity in GDR. The case of the neckershif of the Young Pioneers (1949-1989) The blue neckerchief symbolized the membership in the pioneer organisation, which was founded in 1948 in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, in order to give a framework to the children spare time activities and to give them a party-political orientiation. Since 1949 and the foundation of the GDR, the pioneer organisation was the first and only official forge of the political collective organisation for young people. Based upon a discursive, iconographical and anthropological analysis, this article focuses on the blue neckerchief between 1949 and 1989. Normative reality which became accepted by a majority of parents at the beginning of the 1960s, the neckerchief was a central symbolical element of the official discourse and image of the pioneers. Wearing it was considered as a proof of commitment and love to the socialist project. It could be at the same time dangerous, because it was the membership's sign of a political minority, who suffered symbolical and physical violence from other pupils. At the beginning of the 1960s and the transformation of the pioneer organisation into a mass youth organisation, the blue neckerchief was the expression of an institutional pressure and symbolised the triumph of conformism. Finally, the analysis of the neckerchief shed a gloomy light on the failure of the GDR educational and political projet. Instead of creating the new socialist man, the SED regime produced a disciplined and conformist socialist subject.
