Description
Book SynopsisEdward Dickinson traces the story of German child welfare policy over an extended period of conflict and compromise among competing groups-progressive social reformers, conservative Protestants, Catholics, Social Democrats, feminists, medical men, jurists, and welfare recipients themselves.
Trade ReviewAt the center of Edward Ross Dickinson's excellent study are the contests and conflicts that shaped the field of child welfare in Germany across four changes of regime between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1960s. This long time span--and Dickinson's adept charting of continuities and ruptures in the visions and practices of child welfare across it--bespeaks only one of the book's many ambitions. Impressively cognizant of the pertinent historiography of state, welfare, and civil society in Germany and other European countries, Dickinson's book resituates social reform and social policy at the heart of the state-civil society nexus in modern Germany...Grounded in an obviously rich collection of archival sources, Dickinson analyzes a myriad of organizations and institutions...A nuanced analysis. -- Kathleen Canning * American Historical Review *
By focusing on the politics of the German child welfare system from the mid-19th to the late 20th century, Dickinson's excellent study raises provocative questions concerning the connections among the process of modernization, the development of the welfare state, and the rise of fascism. * Choice *
Through an examination of child welfare policy in Germany between 1871 and 1961, this study addresses continuity and discontinuity in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century German history and the relationship between the modern welfare state and modern regimes forms (e.g. democracy and fascism). Dr. Dickinson concludes, among others, that the politics of child welfare policy in Germany reflected democratic continuities between the Empire and the Federal Republic that were as important as the antidemocratic continuities between the Empire and the Third Reich. * International Review of Social History *
Its contributions to the fields of welfare state history and modern German history are clear and compelling. -- Mary Jo Maynes, University of Minnesota
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Society, Politics, and Modern Social Policy 1. The Inception of Modern Child Welfare Policy, 1840-1895 2. Competing Reform Conceptions in the 1890s 3. Expansion and Consolidation, 1900-1914 4. The Struggle over Child Welfare Policy, 1910-1914 5. Child Welfare Policy in the Great War, 1914-1918 6. Revolution and the National Child Welfare Act, 1918-1924 7. Child Welfare, Bureaucracy, and "Cultural War," 1924-1929 8. The Great Depression and National Socialism, 1930-1945 9. Child Welfare Policy in the Federal Republic, 1945-1961 Conclusion: Democracy, Fascism, and Social Policy Notes Index
