The blue neckerchief symbolized membership of the Young Pioneers, which was founded in 1948 in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, in order to give a framework to the children’s spare time activities and to give them a party-political orientation. From 1949 and the foundation of the GDR, the Pioneer organization was the first crucible of the political collective organization for young people. Based upon a discursive, iconographical and anthropological analysis, this article focuses on the blue neckerchief between 1949 and 1989. The neckerchief became an institutional and normative fixture and was accepted by a majority of parents by the beginning of the 1960s. It was a central symbolic element of the official discourse and image of the Pioneers. Wearing it was considered a proof of commitment and love for the socialist project. It could at the same time be dangerous, because it was the membership’s sign of a political minority, who suffered verbal and physical violence from other pupils. At the beginning of the 1960s with the transformation of the Pioneer organization into a mass youth organization, the blue neckerchief was the expression of an institutional pressure and symbolized the triumph of conformism. Finally, analysis of the neckerchief paints a gloomy picture of the failure of the GDR’s educational and political project. Instead of creating the new socialist man, the SED regime produced a disciplined and conformist socialist subject.