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Result and Limitation of the Postwar German's Social Welfare -Around Economic Crisis of the Weimar Republic and Its Unemployment Insurance Law-
Journal of Humanities
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After World War I, how to control inflation and stabilize currency valuewere two of the common matters of concern among all the European nationsthat participated in the war. Of those European nations, Germany experiencedthe most serious level of inflation. At that period, Germany adopted arepublic as its political system. The Weimar Republic, the country’s firstdemocracy in its history, was not well supported by Germans. It was becauseGermans thought that the newly created republic was blame for the nation’sdefeat in war and its aftermath. Despite its general image of “improvised democracy” resulting fromGermany’s lost war, the Weimar Republic made a lot of accomplishments inthe area of social welfare. After having overcome its crisis and entered intoa period of stability, the republic endeavored to expand the social welfarerights for workers. The history of the republic has so far been limitedlyinterpreted as a middle stage that partly opened a way for Nazism. Highunemployment rate and the world’s economic recession dealt a heavy blowcontinuously to the nation’s first republic based on parliamentary democracyand had something to do with Hitler’s grasp of power. Therefore, the economic crisis and social welfare policies of Germany afterWorld War I are the highly significant events in understanding the weaknessof sociopolitical structure of the Weimar Republic and the advent of statesocialism along with the Great Depression in the 1930s. This paper is aimedat examining the influence of Germany’s war-time fiscal policy on thepost-war Weimar Republic and, by delving into the “passive resistance”related to its war reparations, the economic crisis of Germany. The study willthen trace the history of social welfare in Germany in close consideration ofthe economic crisis of Germany and the “social welfare policies” carried outby the Weimar Republic.
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