Prague Social Policy in the Interwar Period - Municipal Institutional Care in the Central European Context
Abstract
The study is focussed on the formation and implementation of communal social policy in the area of closed - institutional care in the period between the two World Wars in the capital city of Prague. Using the example of the idea and implementation of a project for a central care institute - the Masaryk Homes - the article describes the concept for social care in interwar Prague in comparison with the situation in Vienna and Warsaw, two cities whose officials approached this issue from opposite poles.
While Viennese officials had viewed institutional care as the foundation for addressing social problems in the city since the turn of the century, Warsaw administration based its newly built post-war social system on open care. The work compares not only the concept of the communal social policy of all three cities in the context of state-wide social measures and the specific results of their implementation in the social, health and economic fields, but also the politicians involved in these matters and their activities in this sphere.
The transfer of models for addressing social institutional and closed care in the individual cities is also discussed.