Origins of the German Welfare State

Social Policy in Germany to 1945

verfasst von: Michael Stolleis

Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Buchreihe : German Social Policy

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book traces the origins of the German welfare state. The author, formerly director at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt, provides a perceptive overview of the history of social security and social welfare in Germany from early modern times to the end of World War II, including Bismarck’s pioneering introduction of social insurance in the 1880s. The author unravels “layers” of social security that have piled up in the course of history and, so he argues, still linger in the present-day welfare state. The account begins with the first efforts by public authorities to regulate poverty and then proceeds to the “social question” that arose during the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. World War I had a major impact on the development of social security, both during the war and after, through the exigencies of the war economy, inflation and unemployment. The ruptures as well as the continuities of social policy under National Socialism and World War II are also investigated.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Nation State and Social Policy: An Ideational and Political History

Introduction to the Book Series “German Social Policy”

Abstract

Advances in social policy were often related to processes of nation-building, like the introduction of social insurance by Chancellor Bismarck during the years 1883–1889 which contributed to the social integration of the new German Empire. The Empire had been created through the unification of the numerous German states in 1871. Critical periods in a country’s history that went along with a renewal of the national spirit also propelled social reform, like the New Deal during the Great Depression in the 1930s and the creation of the British “welfare state” in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Today, the golden age of the welfare state, the decades after WW II, has passed. Domestic problems combine with the impact of globalisation. Some authors assume that globalisation makes nation states increasingly irrelevant. What, then, is a history of a national welfare state as presented in this book series good for in the contemporary debate?

Lutz Leisering

Origins of the German Welfare State: Social Policy in Germany to 1945

Abstract

This book provides a historical survey of the development of social protection in Germany up to 1945. It is based on the realization that the modern, complex “system” of social protection is an “evolved” one and can be best understood by knowing how it came into being. It has layers of historical growth and is a far cry from the kind of rigor one expects of “systems” in the scientific or philosophical sense. But in the professional discourse of social theory and social law it may well be referred to as a “system,” and this can be useful to the historian if he is asked to specify the past phenomena he is searching for and in which he expects to find a bridge to the present.

Michael Stolleis

Backmatter

Titel: Origins of the German Welfare State
verfasst von: Michael Stolleis
Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-642-22522-2
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22521-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22522-2