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The counterposition was put by Bismarck himself, who wanted
the state to pay the full cost of the insurance. He saw it as a national
task which, at least in the long run, had to be addressed by the whole
of society and paid through the national income. 73 It was not only his
interpretation of social justice that led to this position, but also the
wish to make the Reich responsible for welfare. 74 The other government
representatives did not want to go as far as Bismarck, having
realistic concerns that the Reich budget, unable to afford the new
institution, would be driven into debt. Nevertheless, they saw the
state as responsible for taking an active part in a system which the
state itself had made obligatory for a large part of the population. As
the burden of poor relief would certainly decrease as a result of the
law, it was only fair that the state should contribute to the new insurance.
75
Among the majority who held this view, however, there was a
debate on how the state subsidy should be composed. The legislators
had stipulated that each party—employers, employees, and the
state—should pay one-third of the total contributions. But then
Count Adelmann, a member of the minority of the Centre Party who
supported the law, had a better idea. Why not let everybody have the
same share of this blessing? Was it fair that people with higher pensions
because they earned more got more money from the state than
those receiving lower pensions because of their low wages? 76 A
majority of the commission found it more just to define the state subsidy
as an invariable sum of 50 Marks for each pension. Injustice
could be avoided, they argued, by a uniform distribution of the state
subsidies between all pensioners. 77 It is interesting that this time, the
argument in favour of justice of equality prevailed. Apparently the
logic of the market, the principle of efficiency, did not apply where
tax money was concerned.
73 See Quellensammlung, 2nd section, vol. 6, no. 43 (Bismarck’s vote on the
‘Grundzüge’, 11 Sept. 1887).
74 See Michael Stolleis, Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland, 3 vols.
(Munich, 1992), ii. 455 et seq.
75 Bosse and Woedtke, Reichsgesetz, 99.
76 e.g. for a pension of 120 Marks p.a. the state subsidy was one-third of this
sum: 40 Marks. But for a pension of 360 Marks, the state subsidy was 120
Marks, three times as much as in the lower pension.
77 Bosse and Woedtke, Reichsgesetz, 282.
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