Between 1883 and 1889, Chancellor Bismarck introduced the world's first compulsory state social insurance system — covering sickness (1883), accidents (1884), and old age/disability (1889) — transforming the state's relationship to worker loss and welfare.

Bismarck's welfare legislation transformed the social conditions in which German writers and intellectuals lived; it influenced the naturalist literature of Gerhart Hauptmann and contributed to the European socialist political culture that shaped the poetry of the fin de siècle and early twentieth century.