Internationale Expertennetzwerke und nationale Sozialstaatsgeschichte: Versicherung der Silikose in Deutschland und der Schweiz (1900–1945)

International Networks of Expertise and National History of the Welfare State: The Insurance of Silicosis in Germany and Switzerland (1900–1945)

The article examines the role of international expert networks for the history of national welfare states. It focuses, as an exemplary case, on the insurance of silicosis, a severe industrial disease most common among miners and metal workers, comparing Switzerland and Germany. Both countries accepted silicosis as an industrial disease, to be insured as an occupational illness by the national institutions for accident insurance, only comparably late in the 1920s, long after countries like Britain and South Africa. The article argues that the process of recognising silicosis as a case to be insured under national accident insurance schemes was not triggered through bilateral learning processes (for example contacts between Swiss and British institutions) but rather by an alliance of national, international and transnational actors. In particular, international organisations like the International Labour Office (ILO) and transnational networks like the International trade union of stone workers were crucial for the recognition process. The article highlights the main factors for granting silicosis the status of an occupational illness; it also examines the early years of the insurance regime in which the influence of the ILO and international trade unions gradually vanished.