Formation Process of the Reichsversicherungsordnung in Willhelmine Germany and its Significance in Social Policy

Abstract

With the Reichsversicherungsordnung in 1911 the German Workers' Insurance was codified into a single system of law. But its significance was more than a merely formal codification of the existing laws of Workers' Insurance. Bismarck's Workers' Insurance was carried out by individual corporations, each sector of which was introduced, one after another, with different formative principles and different forms of administration and management. Therefore it has been suggested since the 1890s that each of sector insurance should be organically combined. In 1903, the Reichstag officially adopted a resolution for the unification of the three existing sectors of the Workers' Insurance, thus creating a single law. After this resolution, the Reich-government also began to draw up a bill of unified social insurance, namely the Reichsversicherungsordnung. A completely unified system of social insurance was the goal of this plan, in which a single organ would cover all sectors of social insurance. This plan seeked to rationalize the insurance; organic divisions according to enterprise or type of industy were to be abolished, and the insurance was to be re-systematized into a relatively large regional unit. But this new plan faced the fierce opposition of industry, which was interested in maintaining the existing institution intact. The new plan could not be realized without revisions. The 7feic/i-government then tried to establish a Regional Insurance Board (Versicherungsamt), which would cover all three insurance sectors and thereby would contribute to the unification of the system. In addition the Board would be given responsibility for making decisions about the administration and management of insurance: superintendence and arbitration also would become the Board's domain. It was intended that the Board would overcome the partisanship of the existing individual organs of the Insurance and that it would integrate the Insurance system into a nationwide political framework. Although this plan also met with stubborn opposition and certain concession was not to avoid, the Reich-government implemented this plan. There existed a peculiar logic from the standpoint of government that rose above individual interests. The wilful government tried to fill a particular role as a coordinator and to induct the nation comprehensively into the Social Insurance system. The Reichsversicherungsordnung thus came into existence as the outset of that the state purposefully took the social security of the nation as a part of its inherent function, not only as a tool of keeping the existing state order or repressing the Social Democrats. The framework of this system thus introduced the basis of German Social Insurance and the bud of the development of Sozialstaat in the following period.