Has all that has been done lately for infants failed? 1911, infant mortality and infant welfare in early twentieth-century Germany

Abstract

Declining birth rates and continuing high infant mortality rates, particularly when assessed from an international perspective, led to the emergence of an increasing infant welfare movement in Imperial Germany. In the first decade of the twentieth century the infant welfare campaign soon developed from a voluntary association of philanthropists to a national movement. Infant welfare centres were created by the municipalities or by private associations. They elaborated detailed concepts of infant care. As low breastfeeding rates in Germany, together with the often inadequate condition of artificial food, were identified as a key factor behind the high infant mortality rates, the main objective of the infant care movement was to increase breastfeeding. Consequently, breastfeeding campaigns were launched throughout Germany, balancing in their means between propaganda and instruction, education and control. Against this background the extremely high infant mortality rates during the heat wave of 1911 were experienced as a tremendous shock, putting all the recent efforts to combat high infant mortaliy into question: "Has all that has been done lately for infants failed"? This paper focusses on (1) the demographic impact of 1911, particularly on the basis of regional and urban-rural differences in infant mortality rates as well as on (2) the political consequences both on national, federal, and local levels. All in all the campaign against high infant mortality rates seemed to have largely remained an academic discussion, as excess infant mortality rates played only a subordinate role in public discourse. However, the campaigners successfully exploited the heat wave to fade eugenic tendencies into the background. © Belin. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays.