Development of Legal Advice and Information for Workers and for Economically and Socially Disadvantaged People
In the previous parts, five institutions were introduced: the Catholic People’s Offices, the Workers’ Secretariats, the legal advice centres of charitable organisations and the municipalities, as well as the Legal Protection Centres for Women.
In the following, we will sketch the broad development of these legal advice institutions, and for this, we will return to the early 1900s.In 1904, there were public legal advice centres[427] in 110 cities. The Catholic organisations had legal advice centres in 56 cities. Workers’ Secretariats had been founded in 50 cities, and women’s associations operated their Legal Protection Centres in 35 cities. In contrast, there were only a few offices of charitable organisations and municipalities, in 11 and 8 cities, respectively.[428] Two points should be mentioned here: in 17 cities, both the People’s Offices and the Workers’ Secretariats had been established. This demonstrates that these legal aid institutions competed with each other to organise workers in large and industrial cities. Furthermore, offices of municipalities for legal advice were set up in the cities where no other legal aid institution existed. The one exception was Dessau, where a Legal Protection Centre for Women existed alongside a municipal legal aid office. Thus, most municipalities did not think that founding their own legal aid offices was necessary if one already existed.
This situation changed dramatically in 1904, with the issuing of a ministerial notification, officially called the “Joint notification of the Prussian Minister of Interior and the Prussian Minister of Commerce and Industry to the district presidents on legal advice for economically disadvantaged people.”[429] The Prussian Government was aware of the demands for legal advice and information caused by legislation on social insurance and labour protection.
However, extrajudicial legal aid was mostly provided by the institutions that were closely connected with political parties (the Centre Party and the Social Democratic Party) or the Catholic Church. Prussian ministers saw the activities of these institutions as “propaganda.” Moreover, many people with low income consulted with persons who provided extrajudicial legal services not as a profession but as a business, without legal qualifications. These were called Rechtskonsulenten (legal consultants) or Winkeladvokaten (corner advocates).[430] The Prussian ministers regarded this situation as harmful. To address it, they encouraged municipalities, especially those which had more than 100,000 inhabitants or were industrial cities, to establish non-commercial and impartial centres for legal advice and information, and provided them with financial support. To guarantee impartiality, the ministers also requested the creation of supervising boards where employers and employees were equally represented. Other federal states followed this policy.[431]After this notification was issued, in 1906, delegates of the legal advice centres of charitable organisations and municipalities established the Federation of German Non-profit and Impartial Centres for Legal Advice and Information (“Non-profit Legal Advice Federation”) as their umbrella association.[432] The Prussian Federal State and some other federal states provided financial support for the Federation and encouraged municipal legal advice offices to join it.[433] Legal advice centres of charitable organisations and municipalities developed under this organisation. Furthermore, Legal Protection Centres for women joined it through their own federation, the Legal Protection Federation for Women.[434]
The effect of these measures was enormous. More and more legal advice offices were set up by municipalities. Other entities also further developed their extrajudicial legal aid.
These organisations competed but also cooperated in cities and the regions. In 1913, there were 144 municipal offices, 36 centres by private charitable organisations, 107 Legal Protection Centres for Women, 129 Workers’ Secretariats of the Free Trade Unions, and 134 People’s Offices of the Catholic Church. Including other organisations for legal advice and information, at least 1143 centres for extrajudicial legal aid were active at this time. In the same year, these legal aid institutions provided legal advice in 1,982,605 cases and prepared 521,322 legal documents.[435] [436] The time from 1890 to 1914 (or 1918, depending on the definition) is called the “Wilhelmine Period,” during which pluralistic activities for extrajudicial legal aid came to fruition. This pluralistic improvement of extrajudicial legal aid is called the “Movement for Legal Advice and Information” (RechtsberMungshilfebewegung)8After 1904, extrajudicial legal aid developed not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. Extrajudicial legal aid had begun in reaction to the increased demand for legal advice regarding social insurance and labour protection laws. That is why legal areas that this aid focused on were primarily workers’ legal issues. As part of municipal administration, the municipal legal advice offices were also expected to support lower-class citizens in legal matters in fields such as poor law and other public laws. Tenancy law was also an important field. The providers of extrajudicial legal aid supported economically and socially disadvantaged people also in civil law, including family and inheritance law. However, these legal areas of civil law remained a small part of their activities. This constellation started changing from 1904 onwards.
Statistics from the municipal Legal Advice Office in Kaiserslautern and the Legal Advice Centre of the Social Museum in Frankfurt in 1903 and
Table 1 The legal areas in cases handled by the Municipal Legal Advice Centre in Kaiserslauterna
| Legal areas | 1903 | Apr. 1910—Mar 1911 |
| Workers’ legal issues | 39.7% | 28.7% |
| Tenancy law | 9.8% | 15.6% |
| Other civil law and civil procedure | 25.3% | 30% |
| Poor law and public law | 12.1% | 16.1% |
| Other legal areas | 13.1% | 9.6% |
| Total number of cases | 8411 | 4416 |
aArbeitersekretariate und Volksbureaus (1904) p. 733; Ubersicht uber die Tatigkeit der Stadtischen Rechtsauskunftsstelle Kaiserslautern 1910/1911 (1911)
Table 2 The legal areas in cases handled by the Social Museum Social Museum in Frankfurt am Maina
| Legal areas | 1903 | 1911 |
| Workers’ legal issues | 36.5% | 16.1% |
| Tenancy law | 6.6% | 11.7% |
| Other civil law and civil procedure | 34.5% | 56.4% |
| Poor law and public law | 5.6% | 6.9% |
| Other legal areas | 16.8% | 8.9% |
| Total number of cases | 10,694 | 18,120 |
aIn its reports for 1903, the Social Museum in Frankfurt counted case numbers for lease, family law, and the law of succession individually, but did not distinguish between other civil law cases and criminal law cases.
In this table, the number of other civil law cases is 80% of the total together including criminal law cases. Institut fur Gemeinwohl (1903), p. 20; Vorstand des Sozialen Museums (1904), p. 15; Vorstand des Sozialen Museums (1912), p. 14
1911 (Tables 1 and 2) provide important information. The columns for 1903 show that workers’ legal issues were still the main legal area for them. Looking at the numbers for 1911, we see that the proportion of workers’ legal issues became significantly smaller and that tenancy law and other civil law cases increased. This data suggests that between 1903 and 1911, the main support areas of these legal aid centres shifted from workers’ legal issues to legal issues in the daily life of the lower social classes. If we look at Table 3 on various institutions of legal areas in 1912, this conclusion becomes even stronger. This table shows that the demand for legal
Table 3 The legal areas in cases handled by various legal advice centres 1912a
| Public Iegul udvice centres | Legul protection Centresfor women | Worker’s Secreturiuts | People’s oj | fees | Λll Iegul udvice centres | |||||
| Workers’ legal issues | 140,924 | 26.6% | 8376 | 21.0% | 305,996 | 44.4% | 99,225 | 48.0% | 709,970 | 40.5% |
| Tenancy law | 69,182 | 13.1% | 2925 | 7.3% | 35,952 | 5.2% | 11,774 | 5.7% | 126,934 | 7.2% |
| Civil law and civil | 218,956 | 41.4% | 19,593 | 49.2% | 167,083 | 24.2% | 34,899 | 16.9% | 484,846 | 27.7% |
| procedures Poor law and public law | 34,460 | 6.5% | 3878 | 9.7% | 102,668 | 14.9% | 32,642 | 15.8% | 214,683 | 12.3% |
| Others | 65,449 | 12.4% | 1804 | 4.5% | 78,219 | 11.3% | 27,973 | 13.5% | 215,761 | 12.3% |
| Total number | 528,971 | 30.7% | 39,860 | 2.3% | 689,918 | 40% | 206,513 | 12% | 1,752,194 | (100%) |
^‘Public legal advice centres” include the legal advice centres of both municipalities and charitable organisations.
The numbers in the column for “All legal advice centres” also include the legal advice provided by other organisations than those mentioned (thus, it is not the sum of these four organisations). The percentage of the raw Total number is the proportion of each group of the sum of the whole country. Die Rechtsberatung der minderbemittelten Volkskreise im Jahr 1912 (1913), p. 32advice regarding workers’ legal issues was still the highest (40.5%). Especially for the Workers’ Secretariats and Catholic People’s Offices, workers’ legal issues remained an important area of legal help.[437] While the Workers’ Secretariats and Catholic People’s Offices constantly emphasised the support for the specific legal issues relating to workers, the legal advice centres of charitable organisations and municipalities increasingly put their emphasis on civil cases. Table 3 shows that the proportion of civil cases at the Legal Protection Centres for Women was high. Exactly half of civil law cases were related to family and inheritance law.[438]