The Emergence of the Welfare State in Britain and Germany: 1850-1950 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781138618626)

Wolfgang Justin Mommsen was a German historian. Mommsen's overall work reflects three major shifts in post-war German historiography. First, as the primacy-of-domestic-policy thesis gained ground, Mommsen placed particular emphasis on the domestic factors that influence policymaking under the Bismarckian, the Wilhelminian, and the Third Reich. Second, by using his experience from the study of Imperial Germany to shed light on the problems of interwar Germany, he underlined continuities in German history and contributed to the historicization of the Third Reich. Finally, although Mommsen located certain peculiarities in the German state and society, he treated German history, not in isolation from, but in firm connection with historical developments in the rest of Europe.