Hans-Walter Schmuhl. Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung in Deutschland 1871-2002: Zwischen FÖ¼rsorge,
Hoheit und Markt. Nuremberg: Bundesanstalt fÖ¼r Arbeit, 2003. xx + 776 pp.
Hans-Walter Schmuhl. Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung in Deutschland 1871-2002: zwischen FÖ¼rsorge,
Hoheit und Markt. NÖ¼rnberg: Institut fÖ¼r Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, 2003. xx + 776 S. EUR 12.50
(broschiert), ISSN 01736574.
Reviewed by Ulf Zimmermann (Department of Political Science and International Affairs, Kennesaw State University)
Published on H-German (January, 2006)
Labor Policy in the Five Germanies, 1871-2002
rights. Insofar as anything was done for the unemployed
it was done by the cities, a sort of “municipal socialism,”
which eventually led to the welfare state.
Schmuhl has divided this exhaustive history of employment policy and employment administration into
thee major sections: “On the Way to Employment Administration: From the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the
Founding of the Imperial Institute for Employment Provision and Employment Insurance”; “Employment Administration between Democracy and Dictatorship (19291949)”; and “Employment Administration in the Federal
Republic (1949-2002).” He has also included an “Excursus” on the GDR. Each section and subsection is introduced with relevant coverage of the demographic, economic, and social developments. A better, more comprehensive work on this subject–the economic history of
Germany since unification in a nutshell–will be hard to
find.
Industrialization attracted immigrants. Germany absorbed the largest number after the United States. These
workers were in constant fear of losing their jobs since
they were completely dependent on their employers. As
it came to be recognized that employment depended on
economic conditions, it became clear that unemployment
was not the worker’s fault. Workers shared job lists they
had developed, and in 1890 employers started doing the
same, with cities following suit and establishing their
own employment exchanges. The need for vocational
counseling, especially for women, started to be met with
Wilhelm Lette’s Lette-Vereine. It would be a long time
before unemployment insurance (discussed in academic
circles as early as 1879) came. In the meantime trade
unions provided some insurance and cities supplemented
their funds. The SPD promoted a national insurance system, but the parliamentary majority contended that the
unemployed could always return to farms which were
begging for workers.
Thus between 1871 and 1914 Germany was propelled
from a backwater to an economic leader, owing to basic
processes Schmuhl identifies: population growth; rate of
urbanization; increases in mobility and migration, chiefly
from the east, the biggest in German history; industrialization; the replacement of the old class system with
a market society, with an extensive working class and
a large middle class below the bourgeoisie. This social
change raised the “social question”; responses to this
problem came in health, accident, invalid, and old age
insurance, as we know, but not in workers’ protection or
During World War I unemployment gave way to labor shortages, necessitating the hiring of women. Employment counseling caught on in the wake of U.S. use
of IQ tests, and such instruments were applied to gauge
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candidates’ job suitability. The unions provided for those
still unemployed, until it became necessary for cities to
help out. The national government aided only soldiers.
Needs brought about by the war and its consequences
finally led to an active employment policy. The new constitution stipulated that every German should have the
opportunity for suitable employment, or (alternately) the
necessary support. This support was still left to the cities,
however, and between high unemployment and inflation,
they were vastly overburdened.
Jews were placed into forced labor. But this military
buildup was far from adequate until Speer tripled it between 1942 and 1944. With practically every able-bodied
man in the military, it became necessary to hire foreign
workers, many of whom came voluntarily because of unemployment in their home countries. To this was added
the forced labor of POWs and 700,000 Poles. Jewish labor was necessary for this effort until 1942, when there
were enough Polish workers to replace them. Not long
after the new policy of liquidation was put into effect,
though economic necessity required the employment of
1.5 million Hungarian Jews.
Not until 1927 did parliament pass a law creating an
“Imperial Institute for Employment Provision and Unemployment Insurance.” This had its head office in Berlin,
with a unified network of state and local employment
centers to take the burden off the cities. Unemployment
insurance served those employed in the previous year but
unable to find work in the previous week. Workers’ payins of 3 percent were often insufficient to cover the resulting costs; the system introduced welfare supplements.
Schmuhl rightly calls this change the most significant social policy innovation of the Weimar Republic. By 1932
over 30 percent of the workforce were unemployed. As
Schmuhl insightfully points out, this lack of employment
and camaraderie among fellow workers helped give rise
to groups like the SA and to promote their growth. Further fueling this trend was the dictatorial rule of the last
chancellors of the Republic, who substantially reduced
unemployment benefits. Workers felt like playthings of
the bureaucracy.
After the war, the employment system was in the
hands of the occupiers, who had to deal with refugees
from eastern areas and ten million displaced persons.
Difficult circumstances were eased by the creation of the
British-American bizone in 1947 and the introduction of
the Marshall Plan and the currency reform in 1948. Policies obviously took different directions in East and West.
In the West, the new Basic Law of 1949 made employment a federal responsibility. Its tasks were complicated
by youth with interrupted job training, returning solders
and POWs, the disabled, and former Nazis. In his excursus on the GDR, Schmuhl notes that the state guaranteed
everyone a right to work but they also had a duty to work.
With the planned economy, unemployment statistics disappeared. The exodus to the West meant that problems
with unemployment were few. To compensate for the
losses to the West, increasing numbers of women were
employed, reaching over 90 percent by the late 1980s.
When the Nazis came to power the basic structures
remained the same, except for the racial policy, the codetermination of the unions, and the notion of individualism (this was supposed to be a Gemeinschaft, after all).
They promoted families with special benefits, eliminating
many women from the workforce. The National Socialist
government got people back to work, albeit with lengthened work hours, limited pay, and more extended vacations. Hitler’s reduction of unemployment to 7.4 percent
(while it was still 24 percent in the United States) required
workers to accept employment for any wage and sometimes living in camps. The right to work was replaced by
a duty to work. Accordingly, the NS government steered
workers to wherever work was needed, in a sense “militarizing” the employment market. The National Socialists maintained the Weimar structure of the Institute, but
filled its leadership positions with “old fighters” and promoted NS ideology in employment counseling.
In the Federal Republic, the social security system
of the Weimar Republic was fully in place again by the
1950s. With the economy fired up by the Korean War,
vastly more work for un- or underutilized industrial capacity was available (though that emphasis would leave
the country behind in high-tech industries). By 1960
there were more jobs than workers, which led to the
employment of Gastarbeiter. Only in 1957 was a new
law passed to supplement the Weimar provisions. Its result, the new Bundesanstalt, prioritized the provision of
work, especially for the larger segments of youth seeking employment, and local representatives of the Institute went to schools to offer employment counseling and
make students aware of the help they could provide. The
Institute also integrated thirteen million Eastern refugees
and GDR escapees, helping them get to the places where
workers were needed. As Schmuhl rightly notes, the
“economic miracle” could not have taken place without
As militarization increased, women under 25 were re- their numbers and skills. Increased reliance on Gastarquired to do a year’s work in the military or on farms; beiter was viewed as not only helping Germany but also
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benefiting the home countries (most importantly, Italy, quirement.
Spain, Greece, and Turkey) by relieving unemployment
The Schröder administration renewed an emphasis
there and sending these workers back with enhanced
on
employment–workers
were urged to take jobs even
skills. By 1973 foreign workers constituted nearly 12 perif
they
paid
no
more
than
unemployment. The new Jobcent of the workforce, with Turks the largest contingent.
AQTIV law (2001) urged proactive trips to the employAs technological developments proceeded and the ment office and adopted the Swedish practice of job roservice sector grew, reactive policies became insufficient. tation. The regime promoted community infrastructure
The recognition that the skills workers learned would not improvements and brought in firms to hire the unemcarry them through their working lives required lifelong ployed. Workers found that this strategy violated their
learning and improvement in skills–and entirely new em- right to pick their own jobs. Private employment agenployment laws. Thus in 1966 and 1967 new job training cies emerged with greater incentives to find jobs for their
and employment promotion laws were passed. A law candidates. They accounted for only about 5 percent of
that stressed unemployment prevention, education, and jobs versus 30 percent for the Bundesanstalt–but 70-80
help in choosing the right kind of job was passed in 1969. percent of jobs were found without using the institute
Accordingly the institute was renamed the Institute for anyway.
Employment. The recession and “stagflation” of 1973-75
The latest reform of the Bundesansalt stresses cusled to an increase in unemployment that generated pubtomer
orientation, effectiveness, economy, and codeterlic works programs and saw an end to the acceptance of
mination.
As Schmuhl correctly concludes, the new
new Gastarbeiter. Unemployment hit foreign workers esworld of work requires an approach in which both works
pecially hard, and some firms offered them substantial
and employment offices will have to be more flexible,
bonuses to return home. By now a second generation of
and in which states and communities will have to proforeign workers was beginning to seek work.
vide employment rather than unemployment insurance.
In 1982 the new conservative regime reduced unem- Schmuhl has succeeded in adeptly placing this labor polployment benefits, subsequently backing down a bit, es- icy history in the broader historical and political context
pecially in regard to retraining older workers. Schmuhl and aptly making the causal connections. He has thereby
sees this policy as a failure, only topped by the “unifi- provided not only the most comprehensive resource on
cation crisis,” which showed that the East had been liv- the subject, but has also laid a firm foundation for any fuing above its means, had a huge debt, no export mar- ture studies of German labor politics and policies as well
ket, and (after the Wende) a collapsing internal market as as clear lessons for policymakers in any other country.
well. Three fifths of the working population lost its jobs;
Copyright (c) 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. Hone fifth found other jobs; the other fifth remained unNet
permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work
employed or took early retirement. The Treuhand found
for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accuthat only one quarter of the four million positions in the
rate attribution to the author, web location, date of pubGDR was sustainable. By 1992 the needs of this population, which had been accustomed to guaranteed jobs, lication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social
strapped the Bundesanstalt, which led to the endanger- Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews ediment of Germany’s compliance with the EU deficit re- torial staff: [email protected].
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Citation: Ulf Zimmermann. Review of Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung in Deutschland 1871-2002: Zwischen FÖ¼rsorge, Hoheit und Markt and Schmuhl, Hans-Walter, Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung in Deutschland 1871-2002: zwischen FÖ¼rsorge, Hoheit und Markt. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11357
Copyright © 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for
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nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication,
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