Emil Lederer’s short review examines Otto Hintze’s historical and sociological account of the civil service, published in a lecture series on contemporary occupational estates. Moving from Hintze’s method to his institutional judgments and expectations for state enterprise, Lederer identifies the work’s distinctive value in its historically informed, moderate conservatism.
Hintze combines the legal and social characteristics of officialdom with an explanation of its historical formation. Lederer praises his ability to uncover parallels between developments centuries apart, but concentrates on the political implications of this historical perspective:
H. bezeichnet das deutsche Beamtenrecht (wohl auch das deutsche Beamtentum) als das beste der Welt.
English translation: H. describes German civil service law (and probably the German civil service as well) as the best in the world.
The parenthetical qualification marks Lederer’s distinction between Hintze’s explicit praise of German civil-service law and the broader institutional preference he infers from it. Officials in France and America, Hintze argues, occupy a position closer to that of private employees. Lederer accepts the importance of this contrast while noting that Hintze treats the distinctiveness of Prussian-German officialdom as evidence of superiority.
This preference shapes Hintze’s reassessment of familiar criticisms of bureaucracy. Exclusiveness, patronage connections, militarization through the recruitment of former military personnel, and the pursuit of pension rights appear as largely harmless or even valuable. Lederer also reports Hintze’s claim that public employment leaves personality greater freedom than a social-democratic trade union would. These judgments locate the account’s conservative commitments within its institutional analysis.
The review then turns from inherited structures to administrative expansion:
Das Wachstum des staatlichen Beamtentums hält der Verfasser in Relation zum Wachstum der Staatsaufgaben.
English translation: The author holds the growth of the state civil service to stand in relation to the growth of the tasks of the state.
For Hintze, new state and municipal enterprises need not entail dysfunction. Historical precedent suggests that an established, overly rigid bureaucracy can be supplemented by a more adaptable layer: technicians and commercial specialists would stand alongside legally trained judicial and administrative officials. Institutional differentiation, rather than wholesale replacement, is the mechanism of adjustment. Yet Hintze neither expects unlimited public enterprise nor interprets these changes as the beginning of general state socialism.
Lederer closes by making the connection between historical explanation and political outlook explicit:
Die Schrift kann als Ausdruck einer durch die historische Betrachtung abgeklärten, maßvoll konservativen Anschauung über das Beamtenproblem gelten, und diese Eigenart verleiht ihr ihren spezifischen Wert.
English translation: The work may be regarded as the expression of a moderately conservative view of the civil service problem, clarified by historical consideration, and this distinctive character lends it its specific value.
The review’s central contribution is this characterization: historical comparison makes bureaucratic adaptation intelligible while tempering both criticism of established officialdom and expectations of a socialist transformation through expanding state activity.
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