ABSTRACT
The history of welfare—and of retirement as a major part of it—is only pertinent for identifying some key features of the German modernization process; the German case is also especially useful for uncovering the social logic of retirement more generally. The evolution of the German welfare system presents in a nutshell most of the basic questions and controversies of modern welfare policy. The theoretical model proposed goes beyond what has usually been covered in the discussion of the welfare state to incorporate issues of the institutionalization of the life course and its relevance for the moral integration of modem societies. The notion of “institutionalization of the life course” refers to the evolution, during the last two centuries, of an institutional program regulating one’s movement through life in terms of a sequence of positions and a set of biographical orientations by which to organize one’s experiences and plans.
