Today the European welfare states are strongly challenged and it is heavily debated how much social security a society should provide and how much private insurance is possible. This article goes back to the origins of the German welfare state. In the 1830s, industrialists from the district of...

In the early 19th century coal mining in the region of Aachen (Prussian Rhine Province) developed to an industrial scale within few decades production was mechanised and new types of industrial organization emerged that allowed for concentration on production and economies of scale. The region...

The Weimar Republic is analysed within the framework of limited and open access orders. Germany had developed into a mature limited access order before World War I, with rule of law and open economic access but only limited access to politics. After the war, Germany developed toward an open...