A History of the German Public Pension System: Continuity amid Change provides the first comprehensive institutional history of the German public pension system from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the major reform period in the early twenty-first century. Relying on a wide range sources, including many used for the first time, this study provides a balanced account of how the pension system has coped with major challenges, such as Germany’s defeat in two world wars, inflation, the Great Depression, the demographic transition, political risk, reunification, and changing gender roles. It shows that while the pension system has changed to meet all of these challenges, it has retained basic characteristics—particularly the tie between work, contributions, and benefits—that fundamentally define its character and have enabled it to survive economic and political turmoil for over a century. This book also demonstrates that the most serious challenge faced by the pension system has consistently been political intervention by leaders hoping to use it for purposes unrelated to its mission of providing the insured with secure and adequate retirement income.

"Mierzejewski is well equipped to tell this story, drawing on extensive research in German archival and printed primary sources and demonstrating a complete mastery of this complex topic and its rich historiography throughout his narrative.... [T]his is a readable, well-organized, authoritative, and original book on the German public pension system. With its chapters on pensions during National Socialism, military occupation, and in East Germany, it makes a novel and much welcomed contribution and earns this book the distinction of being the first truly complete history of the German pension system in any language, one that should find wide readership in history, economics, political science, and sociology." - American Historical Review