German literature on the history of insurance stresses the importance of professional guilds for the shaping of insurance and insurance law. Similarly, scholars researching the genesis of Germany's social security claim the importance of guilds as predecessor of social security. However, there is a problem with both narratives: the impact of guilds is commonly asserted but has never been analytically established. Against this background, the present contribution offers an analysis of the support offered by professional guilds from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Its overall conclusion is that modern literature is correct in holding that Germany's social security is rooted in guild welfare. However, medieval guild support had to go through two phases of transformation in the early modern period and in the nineteenth century before it was apt as a model for Bismarck's social security legislation. By contrast, professional guilds had no direct impact on modern insurance and insurance law.

Phillip Hellwege is Professor of Private Law, Commercial Law, and Legal History at the University of Augsburg, Germany. Before taking up his position in Augsburg he was from 2003 to 2010 a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg. In 2015 he has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant for a five-year project on a comparative history of insurance law in Europe. His research interests are (European) private law, comparative legal history and the history of commercial and insurance law.