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Life-Long Work or Well-Deserved Leisure in Old Age? Conceptions of Old Age Within the French and German Labour Movements in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Karen Schniedewind
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The close connection between old age and retirement and to what extent society accepts work-free retirement in old age emerged as the topical themes we know in France and Germany as late as the 1950s and 1960s. By analysing the relevant discussions in the labour circles of both countries the author examines whether this modern concept of retirement originated in the early phase of the welfare state. The concepts and points of criticism which each of the labour movements developed for old age provision show, by virtue of the different national mental attitudes, that their considerations about old age as a life phase diverged from one another to a great degree. The German labour movement believed that old age pensions were primarily a compensation for the reduction in income on reaching an advanced age, and it thus gave preference to the invalidity pension. In contrast, French society supported the idea of welfare security for the old. Along with criticisms of state social policies, the purpose of providing for the old is at the centre of the essay's analysis, more specifically the contrary forms this discussion took in Germany and France: obliged to work in old age or well-earned retirement.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , December 1997 , pp. 397 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1997

References

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27 Bourdelais, Le nouvel âge de la vieilllesse, p. 175. This background explains the privileged status accorded to old persons who had raised several children in the French Old Age Pension Law of 1910. See Schniedewind, Karen, “Soziale Sicherung im Alter. Nationale Stereotypen und unterschiedliche Lo'sungen in Deutschland und Frankreich in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts”, Francia, 21 (1995), pp. 1–22Google Scholar.

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48 Hatzfeld, Du Paupérisme á la Sécurité Sociale, p. 205.

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60 Plans put forward during the revolution for the happy family home, the ideal house in the country, included a separate room for the old folk which was decorated with the motto, “Rest in dignity after a life of labour”: Bois, Les vieux de Montaigne, p. 246.

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