Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic

Edward Ross Dickinson is Lecturer in History, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

At 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.

• Preface 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