‘Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis!’ Times change, and we change with them. And so do our feet. Now they are small, now big, now pointed, now wide. And shoemakers make now big, now small, now pointed, now wide shoes.

But things aren’t as simple as that. The actual shapes of our feet do not change from season to season. For that to happen it takes centuries or at least a human lifetime. Because a big foot cannot become a small one in the blink of an eye. Other clothing designers are luckier in this respect. Full waist, thin waist, high shoulders, low shoulders, and so much besides, can soon be changed with a new cut, with padding and other devices. But the shoemaker must stick rigidly to the shape of the foot, whatever it may be. If he wants to introduce new shoes, he must wait until the large-footed race has died out.

But not all people have the same shape of feet at the same time. People who use their feet more will develop larger feet, and people who seldom use them will develop smaller ones. What is the shoemaker to do in that case? Whose foot shape should he take as standard? Because he too will inevitably be attempting to make modern shoes. He too wants to progress, he too is filled by the desire to give his creations as much purchasing power as possible.

So he does as all other craftsmen do. He sticks to the shape of the foot of those who happen to be socially dominant at the time. In the Middle Ages the knights were dominant, horse-riders who by virtue of spending much time sitting on horses had smaller feet than the ordinary foot-folk. So the smaller foot was modern, and through elongation (long-toed shoes) the impression of narrowness, which was the aim, was further enhanced. But when the knighthood fell into decline, when the walking burgher of the cities attained the highest standing, the large, wide foot of the slow-walking patrician became the fashion. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the more pronounced courtly life led to the decline of pedestrianism once again, and through the frequent use of the litter the small foot (the small shoe) with a high heel, suited to park and palace but not to the street, came to prominence.

The revival of Teutonic civilization returned horse-riding to pre-eminence. Everyone who thought and felt in a modern fashion in the last century wore the English riding boot, even if they did not own a horse. The riding boot was the symbol of the free person, who had now finally overcome the economy of the buckled shoe, the air of the court, the gleaming parquet. The foot remained small but the high heel, which was of no use to the horseman, was abandoned. So the whole of the next century, our own, endeavoured to have as small a foot as possible.

But even in the course of this century the human foot began to undergo a transformation. Our social conditions have meant that we walk faster and faster from year to year. Saving time means saving money. The most elegant circles, people who had enough time, were caught up in this and quickened their pace. Today, a sprightly pedestrian takes for granted a gait hitherto used by the footmen who ran ahead of carriages in the last century. Walking as slowly as people did in earlier times would be impossible for us today. We are too nervous for that. In the eighteenth century soldiers marched at a pace that would seem to us like standing alternately on one foot at a time, and which we would find very tiring. The increase in velocity is probably best illustrated by the fact that Frederick the Great’s army took seventy steps a minute, while a modern army takes 120 steps. (Our drill regulations prescribe 115 to 117 steps a minute. But at present this pace can only be maintained with difficulty, as the soldiers speed up of their own accord. A new edition of the regulations will undoubtedly have to accommodate this feature of the age, certainly not to the detriment of the army’s readiness to fight.) Accordingly, we can calculate how many steps our soldiers, and thus all people who wish to move forwards quickly, will march per minute in a hundred years’ time.

Peoples with a more highly developed civilization walk faster than those who have remained behind, the Americans faster than the Italians. If you go to New York, you always have the feeling that an accident has happened somewhere. On Kärntnerstrasse today, Viennese people from the last century would have the impression that something had occurred.

So we’re walking more quickly. That means, in other words, that we push ourselves off the ground with our big toe more and more strongly. And in fact our big toe is becoming stronger and stronger and more and more powerful. Slow dawdling leads to a spreading of the foot, while quick walking, by more powerfully developing the main toe, leads to a lengthening of the foot. And since the other toes, particularly the small one, do not keep pace with this development, since they practically atrophy through low levels of use, this also leads to a narrowing of the foot.

The pedestrian has taken over from the horseman. The pedestrian is only an intensification of the Teutonic principle of civilization. Advancing by one’s own strength is the slogan for the next century. The horse was the transition from the litter-carrier to the self. But our century tells the story of the fall of the horseman. It was the real century of the horse. The smell of the stable was our most elegant perfume, horse-racing our most popular national game. The horseman was the spoilt favourite of folk song. Horseman’s death, horseman’s darling, horseman’s farewell. The pedestrian was nothing. The whole world walked and dressed like a horseman. And if we wanted to dress nicely, we took the riding coat, the dress coat. Every student had his hack, the streets were alive with horsemen.

How different things are now! The horseman is the man of the plain, the flat land. It was the free English landed aristocrat who bred horses and appeared from time to time at the meet to jump over fences after the fox. And now he has made way for the man who lives in the mountains, whose joy consists in climbing mountains, who devotes his life to elevating himself by his own power above the human homesteads, the highlander, the Scotsman.

The horseman wears boots, long trousers that should be loose over the knee and very tight around the ankle (riding breeches). These are of no use to the pedestrian, the mountaineer. He wears – whether he lives in Scotland or the Alps – laced shoes, socks that must not reach over the knee, and bare knees. The Scotsman also wears the familiar kilt, the Alp-dweller the Lederhosen – in essence the same thing. Even the fabrics are different. The man of the plain wears smooth fabrics, the man of the mountain rough weaves (home spuns and Loden.)

Mountain-climbing has become a need for human beings. The same humans who had such a violent horror of mountains even 100 years ago now flee from the plain to the mountains. Mountain-climbing, pushing one’s own body higher and higher through one’s own strength, is now seen as the noblest of passions.

Should that noble passion – and let us remember that even in the last century riding was described as a noble passion – exclude all those who do not live in the highlands? A means was sought to make it possible even for them, a contrivance was sought to execute that movement even on the plain: the bicycle was invented.

The cyclist is the mountain-climber of the plain. That is why he dresses as the mountain-climber does. He wears trousers that are loose at the knee, closing below it with turn-ups, so that the socks can be pulled up around them (they are turned over both in the Alps and in Scotland so that they don’t slip down). In this way the knee has enough play under the trouser to move without hindrance from the stretched to the bent leg position. In passing it should be mentioned that there are people in Vienna who do not know the significance of the turn-ups and who put the socks under the turn-ups. They make a similarly comical impression to the various Stritzows who paint the Alps red in the summer. But in terms of footwear the cyclist, like the mountaineer, wears lace-up shoes.

Lace-up shoes will dominate the next century as riding boots have dominated this one. The English have made the translation directly and still wear both forms today. But we have come up with a terrible hybrid for the transition period: the ankle-boot. The very unpleasant phenomenon of ankle-boots was made immediately plain to us when the short trouser arrived. Then it was obvious: without the benefit of concealment by the trousers, ankle-boots are unwearable. Our officers wore ankle-warmers to hide them and were rightly unhappy when the uniform regulation was applied more strictly, forbidding ankle-warmers among the infantry. For us, however, ankle boots are dead, as dead as the tailcoat in daylight, whose comic effect only becomes apparent when we take it for a walk in the street. In the greatest heat we must put on an overcoat or sit in a coach. And look ridiculous: that has meant the death of every item of clothing in the past.

Because of pedestrian sport, the foot in our elegant circles is no longer as small as it once was. It is becoming increasingly larger. The large feet of Englishmen and Englishwomen no longer prompt our mockery as they once did. We too climb mountains, have bicycles and have – horribile dictu – ended up with English feet. But we console ourselves. The beauty of the small foot, particularly in men, is slowly beginning to fade. Recently a description of Rigo⁴ reached me from America. One of his acquaintances does this in the following way: ‘I knew the gypsy.’ There follows a description that reads: ‘A pair of revoltingly small feet peeped out from under the trousers.’ Revoltingly small feet! That sounds convincing. The new doctrine comes from America! Holy Clauren,⁵ if only you could have experienced this! You, whose heroes could never have sufficiently small feet to be the fine figures of manhood dreamed of by a hundred thousand German maidens.

Tempora mutantur …

Here we should also mention the buttoned shoe, only acceptable in patent leather. They are shoes for doing nothing. Where smooth patent shoes, in dress uniforms, must be worn, in England and in Austrian aristocratic regiments, they are worn with polished leather uppers (under the trousers). But patent dancing shoes (pumps) are the only acceptable shoes for dancing.

I will talk about Viennese shoemakers and Viennese pedestrians next time.