Haircut 1965 Letter

During the mid 1960’s Heinz became obsessed with long hair on boys. In the 1965 letter below Heinz believed that allowing long and “wild” hair styles on boys would be a threat to the school and its progressive education by those who opposed it. Perhaps he felt that in order to not conform, we (the young men) must adjust in outward appearance, as in the school motto “adjust, but don’t conform.” This “crisis” for Heinz was ongoing through the 1960s, even in the School recruitment brochure of 1970 (click here). Heinz was never successful in his endeavor to stop boys from conforming to the rebel long hair, he finally gave up by the early 1970’s … he had bigger problems both social and financial by then. 

It is perhaps ironic that Heinz who was born in 1928 at Marienau wore his hair long to age 7 according to his sister Annemarie in her autobiography Marienau, A daughter’s Reflections. He didn’t cut his hair short until his grandfather Siegfried chastised his parents Max and Gertrud for allowing him to look feminine. What would the analyst Gertrud have said? However the reader needs to keep in mind that for Heinz, Max and Gertrud having experienced the Nazis take over of their school over several years (1933 to 1937) the word “adjust” also had the meaning of survival … something we at Windsor never had live with.