Poverty and Welfare in Modern German History

As pessimism simmers in Europe with regard to demographic and economic pressures on welfare states and immigration and refugee crises, a book about the historical and contemporary nexus between welfare and poverty in the European Union powerhouse of Germany is particularly welcome. One of the five target goals of the European Commission’s “Europe 2020 strategy” is to “reduce the number of people in or at risk of poverty/social exclusion by 20 million.”1 The authors in this collection remind us of how deeply embedded the poor—whether discussed as aliens, indigents, paupers, vagrants, or widows—as well as politics of inclusion and exclusion have been in German society.The most chilling piece of information comes in the well-placed final chapter—that poverty is increasing in even an advanced welfare state and post-industrialized society. Olaf Groh-Samberg demonstrates that “new poverty”—“the irritating intractability of the phenomenon of rising poverty rates in modern welfare societies” (226)—has a long history in class and social stratification—a claim buttressed by the previous seven chapters. Such presentist concerns are not lost on the contributors to this collection, all of whom stress the challenges faced by numerous welfare agents and social-policy strategists to tackle inequality (or, in the case of the Third Reich, to engineer racial and ethnic inequality and destruction, as explored by Nicole Kramer in the fifth chapter).The book features thematically connected case studies written “from below” regarding localized German populations at various moments across more than 500 years. These episodes successfully bridge research about social welfare, largely conducted by political scientists and sociologists, to research about poverty, largely conducted by historians. This interdisciplinary work reveals the long-standing interconnection between migration and unemployment (Beate Althammer), women and poverty (Christiane Kuller), and modernity and mass poverty (Wilfried Rudloff).The collection’s method also attempts to thwart typical political narratives in German history—an intention that, according to Raphael, highlights continuities in approaches to social assistance by communities, states, and even churches (as in the microhistory by Sebastian Schmidt); and changing discourses pertaining to social notions of inclusion and exclusion. The authors’ strategy of comparing the attitudes and operations of England/Great Britain with those of Germany is generally successful.One of the most illuminating threads that emerges from the case studies is the fractal nature of individuals and groups. Whereas individuals navigated, or negotiated, welfare regimes, social policies targeted groups. Yet individual practices and group dynamics blurred—and not just in the Third Reich, which sought to subsume individuals to the community, even as (potential) welfare recipients made individual arguments and sought individual outcomes (Kramer). The authors tend to read the politics of inclusion and exclusion through this tension between the group and the individual.This volume effectively fulfills the goals outlined in Raphael’s introduction, although his emphasis on the benefits of the hyper-localized approach veils a possible criticism (8). It is difficult to set aside the globalization of poverty, especially given Germany’s contribution to increasing economic inequality and expanded notions of inclusion and exclusion abroad through its imperial practices.2 Given the hundreds of millions of people living in extreme poverty worldwide, the reduction by 20 million of Europeans at risk for poverty or social exclusion in the European Commission’s “Europe 2020 strategy” appears rather small on any scale other than the micro

Basic needs · Culture of poverty · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · German · Immigration · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Refugee · Social exclusion · Sociology · Welfare · Welfare state · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · European Political History Analysis · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law

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