6. Welfare Flashcards
What was crucial to the success of weimar according to David Crew?
“After 1918, the success or failure of the Weimar Republic depended to no small degree upon the welfare state’s ability to give millions of Germans at least a fundamental level of material and mental security in the face of the new risks to which they had been exposed by the effects of the lost war, the Revolution, and inflation.”
What did WW1 do to german welfare?
“World War I produced a rapid expansion of the welfare system. The national military emergency and the domestic crisis caused by mass deprivation and hunger on the home front forced the German state to assume responsibility for a much wider range of “clients” (war widows, war wounded, and others) and to expand social rights in return for the population’s “sacrifices to the nation.” (David Crew)
What did the economic situation mean for german welfare?
“Yet the economic problems of the postwar period meant that, even in its best years, the Weimar Republic was an “overburdened welfare state.” The onset of the Depression and the growth of mass unemployment after 1929 destroyed republican democracy and the welfare state upon which it was based” (Crew)
How did the Nazis use welfare?
“The Nazis insisted that social policy must serve the priorities of “racial hygiene.” Instead of supporting the “weak” and the “unproductive,” as the Weimar system was alleged to have done, social policy in the Third Reich devoted its resources to the “biologically” valuable, who could contribute to the economic and racial health of the nation. The “biologically inferior” were denied economic assistance and subjected to “negative” eugenic measures, including forced sterilization, even euthanasia” (Crew)
What happened to german welfare after 1929?
“Especially after 1929, when the Great Depression, mass unemployment, and state welfare cutbacks created previously unimaginable material deprivation and social dislocation, “the limits of what social-technology could achieve were reached in every direction.” Rather than accepting that German history had frustrated their ambitions, welfare experts began to redefine their Utopia. If German society as a whole could not be cured of its social problems, then healthy individuals must be protected from the influence of the “incurables.”” (Crew)
What influence did gender have on welfare in weimar?
“ideologies of gender shaped the definitions and practices of welfare and were in turn recast by state interventions and anchored by state authority.” Social policy “sought to fix gender roles, to align sexual divisions of labor with the social order, to regulate the social body through policing female bodies, even where bourgeois feminist-maternalists were unsuccessful or inactive.” In this book, I will argue that gender certainly played an important role in the shaping of the Weimar welfare state.” (Crew)
When did german most need the welfare state?
“During two major periods of crisis in Weimar’s history—the inflation of 1918 to 1923 and the Depression of 1929 to 1933—public welfare became the only means of assistance for the great majority of those in need” (Crew)
When was Hamburgs welfare state created?
“The legal framework for Weimar Hamburg’s welfare system was the law passed in May 1920” (Crew)
What qualified people for welfare in hamburg?
“To qualify for public relief, an applicant had, in general terms, to be unable “to provide the necessary means of support for himself and his dependents.” “ (Crew)
What did those on welfare in hamburg recieve?
“In addition to their basic cash relief, most welfare clients also received some kind of supplement for rent, clothing, gas bills, as well as support in kind, such as subsidized foodstuffs (two-thirds of the price on the open market) and health care. The Hamburg Welfare Department had its own company to supply clothes to welfare clients, and shoe repairs were done by a work-creation project of the Hamburg Labor Office, organized as a limited liability company in April 1924. In the winter months, welfare clients also received “a supplementary fuel benefit in the form of coupons for two or more hundred weight of coal briquettes each month.” “ (Crew)
Why did people in hamburg rely on welfare?
“Because of the damage done by the war and the postwar years, public health became one of the Hamburg Welfare Department’s most important fields of activity. There were special health programs for children and young people, but the Welfare Department also supplied medical assistance for the needy and paid for medicine, hospital stays, and rest cures.” (Crew)
What was hamburgs welfare system the first to do?
“Hamburg had “the first and only publicly supported treatment facility for alcoholics in Germany” and in 1925, the Welfare Department was also developing plans for the treatment of “persons addicted to morphine, cocaine, and other dangerous drugs.”” (Crew)
How was the hamburg welfare state presented in the press?
“In 1926, an English-language newspaper presented the Hamburg welfare bureaucracy as it undoubtedly most liked to see itself: “President Martini is a broad-minded and generous hearted citizen who does everything in his power to make his officials realize that they are not dispensing charity but serving public welfare by ministering to those in distress who, largely through no fault of their own, have become poor and dependent on outside help.” When Paul Neumann came to sum up the transformation of Hamburg’s welfare system after the war, he maintained that “not only the name has changed … but something more essential, the spirit.”” (Crew)
What was the image of welfare officials to the public?
“The image of the insensitive and imperious welfare official continued to circulate, even after inflation was brought under control. In 1926, for example, Martini cited an article in the Communist Volkszeitung “that complained that a welfare applicant who had been unemployed for months was rudely interrogated about his finances.” “ (Crew)
Who played a big part in the functioning of the welfare german state?
“By 1926, Stadtrat G. Binder, a Social Democratic welfare expert, was able to observe with some satisfaction that, “I know cities where 30 to 50 percent of the poor-law guardians are workers.” Binder thought that a strong working-class presence among the volunteers was certainly to be welcomed because, “belonging themselves to the property-less class, dependent solely on … their labor power, the working-class volunteer is intimately familiar with the conditions confronted by people who apply for relief.” “ (Crew)
What was done to try and improve the image of welfare workers?
“Symbolic attempts were also made to improve the status and the public image of volunteer welfare workers. In 1926, for example, Elena Luksch-Makowsy was commissioned by the Hamburg Senate to design “an artistic medallion … that would be awarded to volunteers as a sign of their long years of service. … The inscription ‘For faithful work in the service of the people’ expresses … the spirit in which this medallion will be awarded. … The thirteen-centimeter-high, nine-centimeter-wide bronze medal portrays, in a beautiful unity of form, a train of people, meant to symbolize the laboring population.”” (Crew)
What was the attitude of some welfare volunteers?
“In July 1926, it was reported that “some of the volunteers are upset because they think the rent support some clients receive is too generous.” And in 1928, a Hamburg welfare official observed that “the volunteers find it hard to understand why a ‘child-rich’ family, whose breadwinner has a permanent but poorly paid job should be granted ongoing rent support, or why clients with severe lung diseases should be given special benefits. … [District welfare office director] Valentin has often felt that the volunteers see the district office as no more than a countinghouse.” “ (Crew)
what complaint was made against hamburg welfare volunteers?
“But the volunteer workers were allowed to award relief that was as much as 33.3 percent higher than the official guidelines, and they did, at times, respond to pressure from below. In 1921, there were complaints that some volunteers in Hamburg were too liberal with grants of relief. In 1923, at a meeting of district welfare office directors, an official observed that “the attitudes of the volunteers play a significant role” in the awarding of relief and that “volunteers in Barmbeck-Nord have always displayed a certain generosity … and usually agree unanimously to award the highest level of support.”” (Crew)
What did people turn to after the welfare state began to struggle during the depression?
“The increasingly massive assault on the living standards of German families during the Depression inspired a Protestant commentator to warn that “whether or not our people survive the distress and dangers of this historical epoch will, in the end, be decided by the German family’s powers of resilience. The family must carry the largest part of the burden, which the welfare system can no longer manage. … That we can dare to make such drastic cuts at all is a ‘blank check’ of our faith in the strength of the family.”” (Crew)
What did some claim the welfare state had done to the family?
“Existing social policies appeared to have failed to provide “the special protection of the family by the state” promised in the Weimar constitution. The legal measures taken by the Weimar state had, in fact, produced exactly the opposite effect: tax legislation; regulation of wages and salaries; child support benefits; regulations concerning pension, sickness, accident, unemployment, and welfare benefits; housing and educational policy; and even regulations governing garnishment of income (Pfdndung) all had consequences “hostile to the family.”” (Crew)
What was the welfare state used as in the context of economic trouble?
“In 1932, Bertha Finck attacked the dangerous shortsightedness that informed state spending cuts: “To balance the budget, the suffering German family is asked to make one sacrifice after another. The amount of welfare is now dictated not by the amount of distress but by the available financial means.” A Catholic commentator agreed with Finck’s remarks and pointed out that successive emergency decrees had deprived German families of the financial assistance previously provided by health and accident insurance, public housing, and other supports at the same time as their own economic resources were being severely depleted by the ravages of mass unemployment.” (Crew)
What began to develop after the depression that shows the shortcomings of the welfare state?
” With over 1,000 people a day showing up at some welfare district offices during the Depression, the dangers of failing to deter or to control confrontations were obvious: “Political agitators, troublemakers, and psychopaths use these gatherings to incite the public against the agency.” In December 1932, welfare district office VI reported that it had been virtually besieged by crowds of unruly welfare clients:
At about 10:30 in the morning a lot of people quickly assembled in the waiting room. … Several women and men suddenly pushed their way into the anteroom to my office, where they presented their long-standing demands for more money, more clothing, and more fuel. The police arrived immediately, but as they were trying to push the people out of the room, they were attacked and had to make use of their rubber truncheons. It appeared that the police would not be able to restore order, so I summoned the riot squad.” (Crew)
How was violence at welfare offices politicised?
“The competing voices in this public discourse on violence expected to alter the balance of symbolic power within the welfare system by discrediting either welfare clients or welfare officials. In 1930, for example, the Hamburg Social Democratic newspaper charged that Communist descriptions of violent incidents were largely fabrications designed to incite further unrest among welfare clients” (Crew)
How were those who acted violently in welfare offices seen?
“Normal clients were expected to submit themselves peacefully to the administrative routine of the welfare office; clients who disrupted this routine were, thus, by definition, deviants whose abnormality could be dismissed as a reflection of external political manipulation or of unusual individual psychological problems.” (crew)
How did communists try to politicise accusations by welfare official against them?
” Hamburg Communists not only rejected these accusations but also attempted to turn the tables on the Social Democrats by claiming that certain welfare officials had actually attacked defenseless clients. In 1930, for example, the Hamburger Volkszeitung published a “letter from a worker” who claimed that
a short while ago, I went to the welfare office in the ABC-Strasse. It was my intention to pick up my support. In room 37, I got into a verbal exchange with the official, who held his fist in my face and started to get ready to hit me. In a flash, the door was closed. … Four other officials jumped all over me. … I was choked around the neck, and they trampled my body with their feet.” (Crew)
What did violence against welfare officials signify ore broadly?
“Occasionally, violence appears to have been accompanied by almost apocalyptic visions of a final reckoning with the welfare system and, perhaps, with the Weimar Republic. In 1931, for example, “the welfare volunteer, Frau D. reported that her husband … who is active as a volunteer in district 17 … was attacked in front of his house by a welfare client who told him that ‘now all of the agencies of the Welfare Department will be swept overboard.’”” (Crew)
What challenge was france facing in the thrities according to its government?
“The French, it was lamented, just did not have enough children. The physical sciences had taught the mastery of matter, but the human sciences, which took the perfecting of the species as their object, lagged far behind. The result was a population grown feeble and decadent, unable to meet the demands of modern civilization and shrinking in number.” (Philip Nord)
What was the Alliance?
“The Alliance nationale pour l’accroissement de la population française was founded in the 1896 by the statistician and criminologist Jacques Bertillon. Alliance members, as many others in the fin de siècle, bemoaned France’s declining birthrate and wanted to do something about it, but the organization was unique in the social-science perspective it brought to the enterprise. It mobilized numbers, charts, graphs, the whole apparatus of a nascent science of demography to demonstrate the perilous consequences of population decline, and that social-science commitment did not flag in the inter-war decades.” (Nord)
What agenda did the Alliance push?
“The Alliance nationale, however, for all its scientistic pretensions, was at bottom a lobbying organization. It had a pronatalist agenda to push, which from the midthirties took at once a more militant and more conservative turn. The generation of the Great War, the Alliance pointed out, had lost its best men and was not reproducing in sufficient number. That sad fact had become all too apparent mid-decade when, for the first time, deaths began to outnumber new births. It was at this moment, in 1936, that the organization changed its name to the Alliance nationale contre la dépopulation.” (Nord)
Why did the Alliance push their agenda?
“The mounting Nazi threat heightened the Alliance’s sense of national crisis. A France that meant to stand up to the Germans required soldiers, but in a country short of fresh young men, where were the bodies to be found? The United States had replenished its population through immigration, but Alliance vice president Paul Haury rejected this option.” (Nord
How did the Alliance seek to achieve their goals?
“But well-crafted policy might counter the regnant self-centeredness of the day. What if women were enfranchised and families got extra votes for every minor child? What if the system of family allocations was better funded and extended to encompass wider swaths of the population? What if the state provided financial incentives for women to leave the workforce and return to home life? Then there would be little excuse not “to be fruitful and multiply,” and France would rise again, its virtue restored, its population reinvigorated. “ (Nord)
Who was the Alliance alligned with?
“The Alliance’s embrace of an aggressive familism brought it friends in Catholic circles. Indeed, on matters of family policy, the Church and the Alliance held almost identical views. It was Catholic employers who took the lead in organizing the first family allocation schemes. Labor turmoil during 1919 and 1920 had exerted a strong upward pressure on wages. Employers, Catholic employers in the lead, fought back, setting up management-run family allocation caisses that paid out benefits to workers with large families. The more children, the more substantial were the payments, but workers had to demonstrate a record of good character to qualify.” (Nord)
What did the emphasis on family for public duty lead to in france?
“A woman who made a Christian home, took part in civic action, and practiced her religion with a mature seriousness: was she not, some asked, entitled to vote? Christian democrats, the most “progressive” of the era’s Catholic factions, came out for women’s suffrage as well as for the family vote, which meant the apportionment of multiple votes to large families.” (Nord)
How was the nation to be reborn in France?
“On the war’s eve, the Alliance nationale and Catholic familists had come to hold almost identical views. The path to demographic re-birth, it was agreed, lay through a buttressing of family values, a convergence that found practical expression in growing ties between the Alliance nationale and the Church.” (Nord)
How was welfare in france viewed in broadly human historical terms?
“The potential of mankind manifested itself in a series of material and moral advances, each advance or phase characterized by an equilibrium point, an ordering of things that permitted the maximum, most efficient expression of human energies. In the contemporary world, however, the material and spiritual realms were out of whack. Science and industry had unleashed productive forces of immense power, but the human person was not at home in this brave new world. People were overwhelmed, rather, their somatic and mental energies failing to work in unison, their sense of self staggered by a civilization that thwarted rather than nurtured their abilities. The disharmony that resulted left individuals prone to a paralyzed passivity and societies vulnerable to the yet more massive disruptions of “war and bloody revolution.” “ (Nord)
What did the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems believe the world needed?
“What the world needed, now more than ever, was a fuller understanding of “that great unknown: Man” in order to restore the individual’s internal equilibrium, in order to harmonize selves with the environments they lived in. This was the task Coutrot set for himself and the “elite” of researchers he gathered around him. “ (Nord)
Why did the human species need to be rejuvenated?
“Industrial civilization was eating away at the fiber of humanity. The machine enslaved; radio vulgarized; comfort-giving amenities enfeebled. The process of natural selection would in normal circumstances have pared away the accumulating rot, but the medical sciences, motivated by a sentimental humanitarianism, had found ways to keep the weak alive, to prolong the lives of the unadapted. The overall quality of the population deteriorated in proportion, and, worse still, the process was abetted by the democratic spirit of the age, which imputed equal worth to all citizens and empowered the mass of mankind, however unfit, to rule. Yet egalitarianism ran counter to the natural order of things. In a right-ordered society, it was not majorities who took the lead but the exceptional few who imposed their will by force of personality.” (Nord)
How was the species to be improved?
“On the epidemiological front, he recommended improved diet and a regimen of exercise. On the eugenic, he talked about requiring marriage-bound couples to undergo a prenuptial exam. On the whole, Carrel eschewed negative, disciplinary measures, but he did countenance the whip for criminals and the gas chamber for the most hardened convicts.” (Nord)
What topics interested scientists in france over the thirties?
“Scientists of all kinds—demographers, human engineers, eugenicists—took a deepening interest in family and population issues over the course of the thirties. The relevance of this phenomenon to the present discussion is threefold. In the minds of many, from Boverat to Coutrot to Carrel, the physical regeneration of the nation entailed a concomitant spiritual revival framed in often explicit religious terms.” (Nord)
How did policies change in france in the thirties?
“A series of decree-laws in the summer of 1938 shored up family allocation benefits in the agricultural sector and extended the program to altogether new strata of the population, from shop employees to artisans. In the fall came the Sauvy/Debré decree awarding cash bonuses to stay-at-home moms.” (Nord)
How does Philip Nord descibe the aims of the french republic in the thirties?
“The Republic intended to push up the birthrate, but more than that: it wanted to bolster a particular family form—the married couple, dad at work and mom in the house, surrounded by a numerous (and legitimate) progeny.” (Nord)
How did the republic not only encourage the family but the right sort of family?
“This is the third important feature of the code: its disciplinary character, which stiffened repressive measures against abortion, which made the sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages more difficult, and which created a whole catalogue of punishments for “outrages to good morals.”” (Nord)
When did frances population start to decline and why was this a problem?
“the French birth rate started to fall towards the end of the eighteenth century, thus depriving the country, which at the time of Napoleon was known as ‘la Grande Nation’ - a seemingly limitless reservoir of men- of the huge population increases experienced by its neighbours in the nineteenth century. Great Britain and Germany, the French observed, derived considerable power from their population boom: they were able to man a vigorous industrial revolution, colonize and populate new continents, and maintain large armies without any strain. “ (Marie-Monique Huss)
How did the first world war impact france and was it worse than germany?
“Secondly, the first world war had an enormous impact on France which, along with Germany, was the hardest hit country, losing 10 per cent of its active male population. But France’s losses, unlike Germany’s, were suffered against a demographic background which was already causing concern before 1914. Moreover, the war, by keeping couples apart for four years, and by eliminating so many men of reproductive age, caused a heavy deficit in births. After the very short-lived baby boom of the early 1920s, the birth rate resumed its decline, reaching an all peace-time low in the late 1930s” (Huss)
What was france facing by ww2?
“Towards the end of the inter-war period, therefore, France was, in the words of Spengler, facing depopulation” (Huss)
What is pronatalism?
“In the strict sense, pronatalism is the ideology which favours a high birth rate and promotes measures thought likely to bring this about.” (Huss)
What motivated the french to support protnatalism in the interwar years?
“Among their various motivations, one can distinguish three main strands: (1) a preoccupation with depopulation and the falling number of births; (2) a more social concern with the welfare and health of the family and children which, if improved, could lead to more children through a higher birth rate and lower infant mortality; (3) a moralistic desire to suppress all sexual activity not conducive to procreation, such activity being described as pornography.” (Huss)
How was declining birthrates in france viewed by its leaders?
“the pathos of Clemenceau- ‘the treaty does not stipulate that France undertakes to produce a great number of children, but that should have been its very first article since … France will be ruined because there will not be any Frenchmen left’ - or Daladier- ‘an empty country cannot be a free country …. We will pursue a birth rate policy which will enable France to remain what it was in the last century”’ - and the indignation of Reynaud’s appeal to the instinct of survival -‘it’s as if we were attending our own funeral’.” “ (Nord)
Which group outside of the french parliant was most imporant?
“the pathos of Clemenceau- ‘the treaty does not stipulate that France undertakes to produce a great number of children, but that should have been its very first article since … France will be ruined because there will not be any Frenchmen left’ - or Daladier- ‘an empty country cannot be a free country …. We will pursue a birth rate policy which will enable France to remain what it was in the last century”’ - and the indignation of Reynaud’s appeal to the instinct of survival -‘it’s as if we were attending our own funeral’.” “ (Huss)
How did french approaches to pronatalism change on the lead up to ww2?
“The immediate post-war years saw the passing of the repressive law on contraception and abortion while, at the other end of the period, on the very eve of the second world war, the code de la famille established a comprehensive system of state support and incentives for families. In between, however, the shift from a repressive to a more supportive attitude is reflected in the gradual development of a system of family allowances.” (Huss)
What was the feeling in france immediately after ww1?
“In the immediate aftermath of the war, when the extent of human losses was being fully measured - 1.4 million dead and a large deficit (1.5 million according to Armengaud) in the number of births - the need to replace the dead was possibly felt even more strongly than during the war itself. “ (Huss)
Why was more pronatalist measures introduced in the late 30s in france?
“The third important period for legislation is 1938-9, culminating in the code de lafamille. In the preceding years, several factors had come to public notice, intensifying the debate and creating a feeling that the state should intervene to raise the birth rate. The first of these factors concerned the depleted cohorts born during the first world war: from 1935 onwards they reached the age of military service and the size of the army was alarmingly reduced” (Huss)
How did the international situation affect french attitudes to pronatalism?
“All these figures were made much more disturbing by the international context in which they appeared. Since the remilitarization of the Rhineland, each new act of aggression by nazi Germany had reinforced a sense of vulnerability. Of course, babies born then would not have saved France from an imminent war, but there was a feeling that one could gain time - one generation, as Chamberlain put it after Munich - and prepare for war, among other things by having babies” (Huss)
How did the french view germany with regards to pronatalism?
“These considerations became even more disquieting when news about the German birth rate was taken into account: Hitler’s pronatalist policy was seen to be clearly successful. Some right-wing French pronatalists envied Germany its leader, but even on the left many saw in this unfortunate race for population growth the only way to secure the future of social democracy.” (Huss)
What did french laws in 1938 and 39 do?
“The laws of 12 November 1938 and 29 July 1939, known as the code de la famille, contained an assortment of measures whose common aim was to raise the birth rate: tax advantages, special assistance for peasant families, further repressive measures against abortion, and, most importantly, a reorganization of family allowances, considerably raised and opened to the whole working population, but with a definite pronatalist slant, the allowance for the third and each successive child being increased, while the allowance for the first child was removed” (Huss)
What was the solution to the problem in france where declining birth was involved?
“Not only was there widespread awareness that France’s population was stagnating and even declining, but there was also a considerable body of opinion - a near consensus by the late 1930s and 1940s - which wanted the state to intervene in the matter. This response - to turn to the state for a solution to the problem - was indeed what pronatalist propaganda was about: personal exhortations had been seen to be fruitless; instead, pronatalists saw denatalite as a collective, political and social problem which required a collective, political answer, and thus they shifted the focus away from the individual parent” (Huss)
How did dome governments react to changing social conditions?
“Indeed, various governments responded to changing social conditions at the turn of the century by enacting laws to prevent the reproduction of what they assumed were degenerate genes, which were seen as linked to particular social and cultural deviations from the norm. Some were due to mental illness and abnormality, which were considered hereditary” (Alberto Spektorowski and Elisabet Mizrachi)
What is the significance of eugenics in sweden?
“The Swedish case has become renowned for two reasons. First, the extent to which sterilization was performed on physically healthy individuals, which was far greater than in all other Nordic countries with similar laws. It was the only country with a state eugenic society, and among the Nordic countries it was the one where eugenics met with its greatest success. Second, the role played by social democracy in these policies has been widely debated. This is a critical point from a theoretical perspective, as eugenics is usually linked with conservative ideologies, with racial nazism, etc. Few have stressed the association between eugenics and socialism, especially reformist socialism.” (Alberto Spektorowski and Elisabet Mizrachi)
