Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Wilhelm Kähler’s Gesindewesen und Gesinderecht in Deutschland (1897)

Schullern’s short scholarly review presents Kähler’s study as an important contribution to a neglected field and a resource for an ultimately unavoidable reform of servant law. Its central concern is the mismatch between the collective category Gesinde and the heterogeneous groups it encompasses. Reform requires a principled decision about how contemporary social legislation should treat both servants collectively and their distinct occupational groups. Schullern reinforces this urgency through an Austrian comparison: existing provincial servant regulations demonstrate conditions he regards as untenable, while Kähler supplies the evidence for assessing Germany.

The review moves from this endorsement to a compressed account of the book’s structure. A historical introduction precedes a survey of contemporary conditions and law across the German Empire and its constituent states, distinguishing domestic from agricultural servants. Schullern explicitly declines a detailed assessment for lack of space; his purpose is to establish the problem’s significance and direct readers to the study itself.

Das Schlusscapital: „Ergebnisse“ entwickelt vor dem Leser die grosse Mehrzahl der aus dem heutigen Gesindewesen sich ergebenden wirtschaftlichen, sozialen, ethischen und juristischen Probleme, verkennt aber auch nicht die ungemein grossen Schwierigkeiten, welche einer allgemein befriedigenden Lösung derselben im Wege stehen.

English translation: The concluding chapter, "Results," unfolds before the reader the great majority of the economic, social, ethical and juridical problems arising out of the present-day system of domestic service, yet does not fail to recognize the uncommonly great difficulties which stand in the way of a generally satisfactory solution of them.

Schullern values the concluding chapter for connecting economic, social, ethical, and legal questions without understating the obstacles to a satisfactory solution. His praise concerns both the breadth of the diagnosis and its acknowledgment of reform’s difficulties; the review does not specify a legislative programme of its own.

Jedenfalls ist sein Inhalt sehr beherzigenswert und zwar nicht zum mindesten die Ausführungen über den Begriff „Gesinde“ (S. bes. S. 201, 216, 217).

English translation: In any case its content is very much to be taken to heart, and not least the discussions of the concept "domestic servants" (see especially pp. 201, 216, 217).

This closing emphasis returns to the review’s conceptual centre: the definition of Gesinde is itself consequential for social policy. Schullern’s endorsement rests on the study’s capacity to make differentiated conditions visible within an inherited collective designation, thereby furnishing evidence and conceptual clarification for future reform.