The Hidden History of Long-Term Care for Older People - ONLINE

Have housemaids staged a comeback? Sociologists and anthropologists examining paid domestic care work in Germany and other European countries argue that today's situation resembles the culture of servants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For a historian, this reference to the past is intriguing. But is it more than mere rhetoric? What can we learn about the structures of long-term care by looking to the past? This talk will focus on the history of long-term care for older people in the Federal Republic of Germany and compare it with developments in Great Britain and Italy. It will outline changes in policy in the post-war welfare state and discuss the long history of privatizing care.

Nicole Kramer has been a Professor of Contemporary European history at the University of Cologne since 2020. Her research covers the gender and social history of National Socialism and the history of European welfare states, care policies, and ageing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is currently finalizing a book on ‘The Values of Care: Long-Term Care Policies, Old Age, and the Welfare State Since 1945’.