The Origins of the Authoritarian Welfare State in Prussia

Conservatives, Bureaucracy, and the Social Question, 1815--70

Hermann Beck


A study of the temperament of Prussian conservatives, and their approaches to social problems and the lower classes.

Prussia's social and political structure, institutions, and values in many ways formed German history of the last two centuries. After unification Prussia accounted for some two-thirds of the Empire's size and population, but the force of Prussia's personality was yet greater: German identity in large part became Prussian identity. The Origins of the Authoritarian Welfare State in Prussia investigates the complex traditions of ideas, institutions, and social policy measures in the Prussian welfare state. The introduction examines the social preconditions and perceptions of nineteenth-century Prussia, and later sections of the volume consider Prussian conservatives, the bureaucracy and its political currents, and the social policies it adopted.

Of interest to scholars and students of German history, this volume will also attract students of governmental social policy and of the workings of a welfare state.

A volume in the series Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany series.

Hermann Beck is Assistant Professor of History, University of Miami, and has been the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship.

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6 x 9, ca 320 pages

ISBN 0-472-10546-9

cloth 45.00E (tentative)

October