2013: Social Insurance under the priority of the economy – Josef Resch and Austrian social insurance from 1918 to 1938

This book deals with the Austrian social (insurance) policy of the interwar years guided by the person of Josef Resch, Social Services Undersecretary from 1918 to 1920, and over the period 1920 to 1938 Social Services Minister for more than ten years. The research is based on sources in the Austrian State Archives and other archives, protocols, newspaper reports and published sources, and not least the writings of Josef Resch.

It is rare that a political field at any period is ideologically determined to such an extent as is the case with social policy in Austria during the interwar years. For the Social Democrats, it was part of their identity. Conservatives and social policy are often associated with the words of Chancellor Ignaz Seipel who spoke of "removing the rubbish of the revolution". For both, social policy was an expression of the so-called "Austrian revolution".

Josef Resch came from a family of modest circumstances out of the Viennese small industries. Using the second-chance path of gaining university admission, he studied law and made himself an expert in social policy. Politically, he was moulded in the Catholic "Volksbund", which dominated the social policy of interwar years within the Christian Democratic party. Resch was rooted in Catholic social doctrine and was close to the Christian trade union, without being one of its representatives. When he became Social Services Undersecretary, he was made head of a subdivision of the "Arbeiter-Unfallversicherungsanstalt" (Worker′s accident insurance institute).

After the end of the coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in October 1920, Resch became Social Services Minister for the first time. However, his second period in this position, from 1924 to 1929, was the most important one. Then, the Christian Democrats implemented their concept of social policy for the middle classes and their ideas of an organisation of social insurance along professional groups. These measures were an expression of power politics, as the Christian Democrats wanted to prevent employees and farmers to turn to the Social Democrats, as well as to avoid that social insurance became the exclusive sphere of the Social Democrats. Finally, in this period laws on subjects already debated before World War I were passed.

To what extent the Christian Democrats′ social insurance policy was dominated by economic aspects is best demonstrated by the so-called "welfare clause", which prevented the implementation of the Arbeiterversicherungsgesetz (workers′ insurance act), which had been passed after massive pressure from the Social Democrats, as its implementation was bound to a certain level of welfare which was never reached until 1938. For Josef Resch, too, the priority of the economy was one of his cardinal parameters of social insurance, although he was an pioneer in his appreciation of the importance of social insurance.

His third period as Minister from 1930 to 1933 was fully dominated by the economic crises and by attempts to reform the social insurance system without additionally burdening the economy. In 1931, he resigned from office for a few months after earning criticism for his reform efforts from all sides. He also stepped down from office in March 1933, as an expression of his refusal of the authoritarian course of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß, which led to the so-called corporative state.

Due to his sympathy for democracy and his understanding of social security, Resch was also appreciated by Social Democrats. Politically, he can be located on the left wing of the Christian Democrats, and therefore he was also nicknamed their "pink eminence". After he was very much involved in the central social insurance act of the so-called "Ständestaat" in 1935, he became minister for social affairs for the last time in 1936 under Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, a ministry overshadowed by his cancerous affliction. However, he continued in office until March 11th 1938.

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