Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/843

INSURANCE: RELIGION] partly by new machinery devised to meet the new obligation imposed. The sick-funds (Krankenkassen) are thus of seven kinds: (1) free assistance funds (Freie Hilfskassen), either registered under the law of 1876, as modified in 1884 (Eingeschriebene Hilfskassen), or established under the law of the separate states (landesrechtliche Hilfskassen); (2) Betriebs- or Fabrikkrankenkassen, funds established by individual factory-owners; (3) Baukrankenkasse, a fund established for workmen engaged on the construction (Bau) of particular engineering works (canal-digging, &c.), by individual contractors; (4) gild sick funds (Innungskrankenkassen), established by the gilds for the workmen and apprentices of their members; (5) miners’ sick fund (Knappschaftskasse); (6) local sick fund (Ortskrankenkasse), established by the commune for particular crafts or classes of workmen; (7) Gemeindekrankenversicherung, i.e. insurance of members of the commune as such, in the event of their not subscribing to any of the other funds. Of these, 2, 3, 6 and 7 were created under the above-mentioned laws.

The number of such funds amounted in 1903 to 23,271, and included 10,224,297 workmen. The Ortskrankenkassen, with 4,975,322 members, had the greatest, and the Baukrankenkassen, with 16,459, the smallest number of members. The Ortskrankenkassen, which endeavour to include workmen of a like trade, have to a great extent, especially in Saxony, fallen under the control of the Social Democrats. The appointment of permanent doctors (Kassenärzte) at a fixed salary has given rise to much difference between the medical profession and this local sick fund; and the insistence on “freedom of choice” in doctors, which has been made by the members and threatens to militate against the interest of the profession, has been met on the part of the medical body by the appointment of a commission to investigate cases of undue influence in the selection.

According to the statistics furnished in the Vierteljahreshefte zur Statistik des deutschen Reiches for 1905, the receipts amounted to upwards of £10,000,000 for 1903, and the expenditure to somewhat less than this sum. Administrative changes were credited with nearly £600,000, and the invested funds totalled £9,000,000. The workmen contribute at the rate of two-thirds and the employers at the rate of one-third; the sum payable in respect of each worker varying from 1-3% of the earnings in the “communal sick fund” to at most 1-4% in the others.

2. Insurance against old age and invalidity comprehends all persons who have entered upon their 17th year, and who belong to one of the following classes of wage-earners: artisans, apprentices, domestic servants, dressmakers, charwomen, laundresses, seamstresses, housekeepers, foremen, engineers, journeymen, clerks and apprentices in shops (excepting assistants and apprentices in chemists’ shops), schoolmasters, schoolmistresses, teachers and governesses, provided the earnings do not exceed £100 per annum. The insured are arranged in five classes, according to the amount of their yearly earnings: viz. £17, 10s.; £27, 10s.; £47, 10s.; £57, 10s.; and £100. The contributions, affixed to a “pension book” in stamps, are payable each week, and amount, in English money, to 1.45d., 2.34d., 2.82d., 3.30d. and 4.23d. Of the contribution one half is paid by the employer and the other by the employee, whose duty it is to see that the amount has been properly entered in the pension book. The pensions, in case of invalidity, amount (including a state subsidy of £2, 10s. for each) respectively to £8, 8s.; £11, 5s.; £13, 10s.; £15, 15s.; and £18. The old-age pensions (beginning at 70 years) amount to £5, 10s.; £7; £8, 10s.; £10; and £11, 10s. The old-age and invalid insurance is carried out by thirty-one large territorial offices, to which must be added nine special unions. The income of the forty establishments was, in 1903, £8,500,000 (including £1,700,000 imperial subsidy). The capital collected was upwards of £50,000,000.

It may be added that employees in mercantile and trading houses, who have not exceeded the age of 40 years and whose income is below £150, are allowed voluntarily to share in the benefits of this insurance.

3. Accident Insurance (Unfallversicherung).—The insurance of workmen and the lesser officials against the risks of accident is effected not through the state or the commune, but through associations formed ad hoc. These associations are composed of members following the same or allied occupations (e.g. foresters, seamen, smiths, &c.), and hence are called “professional associations” (Berufsgenossenschaften). They are empowered, subject to the limits set by the law, to regulate their own business by means of a general meeting and of elected committees. The greater number of these associations cover a very wide field, generally the whole empire; in such cases they are empowered to divide their spheres into sections, and to establish agents in different centres to inquire into cases of accident, and to see to the carrying out of the rules prescribed by the association for the avoidance of accidents. Those associations, of which the area of operations extends beyond any single state, are subordinate to the control of the imperial insurance bureau (Reichsversicherungsamt) at Berlin; those that are confined to a single state (as generally in the case of foresters and husbandmen) are under the control of the state insurance bureau (Landesversicherungsamt).

So far as their earnings do not exceed £150 per annum, the following classes are under the legal obligation to insure: labourers in mines, quarries, dockyards, wharves, manufactories and breweries; bricklayers and navvies; post-office, railway, and naval and military servants and officials; carters, raftsmen and canal hands; cellarmen, warehousemen; stevedores; and agricultural labourers. Each of these groups forms an association, which within a certain district embraces all the industries with which it is connected. The funds for covering the compensation payable in respect of accidents are raised by payments based, in agriculture, on the taxable capital, and in other trades and industries on the earnings of the insured. Compensation in respect of injury or death is not paid if the accident was brought about through the culpable negligence or other delict of the insured. In case of injury, involving incapacity for more than thirteen weeks (for the earlier period the Krankenkassen provide), the weekly sum payable during complete or permanent incapacity is fixed at the ratio of two-thirds of the earnings during the year preceding the accident, and in case of partial disablement, at such a proportion of the earnings as corresponds to the loss through disablement. In certain circumstances (e.g. need for paid nursing) the sum may be increased to the full rate of the previous earnings. In case of death, as a consequence of injury, the following payments are made: (1) a sum of at least £2, 10s. to defray the expenses of interment; (2) a monthly allowance of one-fifth of the annual earnings as above to the widow and each child up to the age of 15.

Life Insurance.—There were forty-six companies in 1900 for the insurance of life. The number of persons insured was 1,446,249 at the end of that year, the insurances amounting to roughly £320,000,000. Besides these are sixty-one companies—of which forty-six are comprised in the above life insurance companies—paying subsidies in case of death or of military service, endowments, &c. Some of these companies are industrial. The transactions of all these companies included in 1900 over 4,179,000 persons, and the amount of insurances effected was £80,000,000.

Religion.—So far as the empire as a whole is concerned there is no state religion, each state being left free to maintain its own establishment. Thus while the emperor, as king of Prussia, is summus episcopus of the Prussian Evangelical Church, as emperor he enjoys no such ecclesiastical headship. In the several states the relations of church and state differ fundamentally according as these states are Protestant or Catholic. In the latter these relations are regulated either by concordats between the governments and the Holy See, or by bulls of circumscription issued by the pope after negotiation. The effects of concordats and bulls alike are tempered by the exercise by the civil power of certain traditional reserved rights, e.g. the placetum regium, recursus ab abusu, nominatio regia, and that of vetoing the nomination of personae minus gratae. In the Protestant states the ecclesiastical authority remains purely territorial, and the sovereign remains effective head of the established church. During the 19th century, however, a large measure of ecclesiastical self-government (by means of general synods, &c.) was introduced, pari passu with the growth of constitutional government in the state; and in effect, though the theoretical supremacy of the sovereign survives in the church as in the state, he cannot exercise it save through the general synod, which is the state parliament for ecclesiastical purposes. Where a sovereign rules over a state containing a large proportion of both Catholics and Protestants, which is usually the case, both systems coexist. Thus in Prussia the relations of the Roman Catholic community to the Protestant state are regulated by arrangement between the Prussian government and Rome; while in Bavaria the king, though a Catholic, is legally summus episcopus of the Evangelical Church.

According to the religious census of 1900 there were in the German empire 35,231,104 Evangelical Protestants, 20,327,913 Roman Catholics, 6472 Greek Orthodox, 203,678 Christians belonging to other confessions, 586,948 Jews, 11,597 members of other sects and 5938 unclassified. The Christians belonging to other confessions include Moravian Brethren, Mennonites, Baptists, Methodists and Quakers, German Catholics, Old Catholics, &c. The table on following page shows the distribution of the population according to religious beliefs as furnished by the census of 1900.

Almost two-thirds of the population belong to the Evangelical Church, and rather more than a third to the Church of Rome; the actual figures (based on the census of 1900) being (%) Evangelical Protestants, 62.5; Roman Catholics, 36.1; Dissenters and others, .043, and Jews, 1.0. The Protestants have not increased proportionately in number since 1890, while the Roman Catholics show a small relative increase. Three states in Germany have a decidedly predominant Roman Catholic population, viz. Alsace-Lorraine, Bavaria and Baden; and in four states the Protestant element prevails, but with from 24 to 34% of Roman Catholics; viz. Prussia, Württemberg, Hesse and Oldenburg. In Saxony and