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Inheritance Practices in the 20th Century

Sep 15, 2017

Workshop at the GHI | Conveners: Jürgen Dinkel (University of Gießen), Simone Lässig (GHI Washington), Vanessa Ogle (University of Pennsylvania)

The examination of inheritance patterns in the twentieth century is an emerging research topic among historians. It is spurred by public and political debates in Western countries about a growing gap between the rich and the poor and the causes for social inequality. In particular, the question of inherited wealth and its relation to rising inequality over the course of the past century prompted heightened interest. However, in contrast to the public debates about unearned wealth, only little empirical research has been done on inheritance patterns in Western societies. 

Therefore it was one major goal of this workshop — as Simone Lässig and Jürgen Dinkel outlined in their introductory remarks — to bring together scholars who have already conducted research on inheritance patterns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to discuss their arguments, methodological approaches and archival sources.

Alastair Owens and David Green presented the results of a collaborative research project analyzing the interdependencies between inheritance patterns, the state and middle-class families in England and Wales from 1850 until 1930. Both argued that for members of the middle class in England and Wales, the political and legal reforms during this period made it easier and more secure to keep property within the family. Together with social traditions and individual bequest patterns the wider legal frameworks provided incentives to keep wealth in the family. In his comment Hendrik Hartog highlighted the usefulness of the "wealthfare" concept introduced by Owens and Green. It brings policies to the foreground that support decedents to keep their wealth in the family, thus stabilizing the status quo.

Jürgen Dinkel and Ute Schneider both focused on inheritance transfers within transnational families and on property transfers across political borders. They both emphasized that migration between countries happened frequently in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus, the spatially absent decedent or heir was a common figure in inheritance transfers. In this context Dinkel analyzed inheritance transfers from the U.S. to the Soviet Union from the late 1940s until the 1970s, and Schneider examined inheritance transfers between the two Germanys. The Cold War, they found, greatly influenced transnational inheritance transfers beyond the iron curtain. Under these circumstances, international organizations and international legal experts as well as family networks became increasingly important for successful estate transfers, and some family members often overlooked in studies on families, including siblings and illegitimate children as well as nieces and nephews, became influential intermediaries, informants, and recipients of estate funds. 

Simone Derix's paper also dealt with a transnational family. Based on her research on the Thyssen family, a transnational ultra-affluent family, she also argued that the analysis of inheritance transfers must not be limited to studying last wills and testaments and the actions of decedents and heirs. Derix pointed to a vast range of rules, instruments, and institutions as well as actors involved (legal and financial advisors, notaries, etc.), that we have to bring into the picture. Furthermore, Derix provided a detailed picture of the variety of strategies related to legal matters and conflict management the Thyssen family members used to deal with inter-family property transfers.  In her comment Vanessa Ogle emphasized the broader political and economic contexts in the Western capitalist world in which these transnational property transfers occurred. 

Studies of inheritance tend to be rather narrowly concerned with documenting the distribution of wealth at death in understanding "who got what" in contrast to the broader range of factors all participants discussed and highlighted. In the final discussion participants pointed out three major findings of the workshop that serve to broaden this common approach: First, all of the papers stressed the equal importance of the broader political, economic and legal frameworks within which inheritance transfers occurred, as well as a broader set of actors who influenced the distribution of estates — like lawyers and attorneys, family members, friends, and transnational agencies. Second, the history of family and kinship in the twentieth century is often described as a process stretching from the extended family to the nuclear family as the norm, and as a process through which family members were bound together less by economic calculations than by emotions. However, as became evident in all papers, family and kinship relations in the twentieth century were much broader than suggested and based on both emotions and economic calculations. Third, drawing on this observation all participants highlighted the persistence of non-market exchange into modern times. Goods and services continue to be transferred without the benefit of markets or prices, to be exchanged as gifts within (transnational) personal networks. Inheritance transfers are one type of these transactions, and thus have to be analyzed within a broader setting of property transfers. 

Jürgen Dinkel (University of Leipzig)

Call for Papers

Topic

American baby boomers stand to inherit about $11.6 trillion in the coming years. The distribution of this wealth will be highly unequal, however. Households in the wealthiest decile will receive by far the biggest inheritances, an estimated $1.5 million per heir on average. By contrast, heirs in the poorest decile will receive an average of $27,000. Enormous and unequal intergenerational wealth transfers are expected in other regions of the world as well. 

Despite the substantial contribution of inheritance practices to social inequality in societies and individual families, we know very little about the distribution of inherited money and assets in the period since the late nineteenth century. Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century has spurred heightened interest in the question of inherited wealth and its relation to rising inequality over the course of the past century.

Although historians have published extensively on inheritance law and practices in earlier periods in a variety of world regions and among different social groups, the twentieth century remains largely unexplored. This workshop thus seeks to bring together the history of inheritance and contemporary history. We want to examine and compare how property and property rights were distributed upon death in different world regions, urban settings, and social groups from the late nineteenth century to the present. We want to analyze how wealth transfers influenced family and kinship in terms of individual life plans, intra-family relations (including sibling and gender dynamics), intergenerational relations, questions of race, social inequality, notions of risk and entrepreneurship, and mobility (including transnational migration). While the legal frameworks for inheritance are important and will be considered in connection with the questions the workshop address, we are primarily interested in inheritance practices. Specifically, we seek to analyze what strategies (wills, trusts, inheritance agreements, etc.) testators used to distribute which parts of their property to which heirs and what factors determined their choice of heirs and the apportionment of property and assets among them. We are also interested in increasingly common strategies used to minimize different taxes on inheritances, such as the use of tax havens and low-tax jurisdictions for setting up trusts and the like. Additional questions include: What significance did kinship possess vis-à-vis personal relationships with persons who were not kin to the testator? What conditions were placed on inheritances and what role did inheritance play in the lives of the heirs?

By examining inheritance practices, the workshop aims to provide new insights into the structure and meaning of personal networks (like family and kinship relations) in the twentieth century. The workshop’s focus on inherited property is also intended to shed new light on continuities and discontinuities in social inequality in families and in societies. Finally, the workshop will explore the interdependence between public, social, and economic welfare structures, on the one hand, and private family and kinship networks, on the other hand, in the modern age.

We seek papers that deal with one or more of the following groups of questions:

  1. Social differentiation: Which kinds of relationships influenced inheritance practices (age, gender, social milieu, religion, generation, status, race, cultural, political, and legal context)? What impact did inheritance practices have on the structure of social milieus and family networks? In certain colonial and post-colonial contexts as well as in some countries, including the United States, anti-miscegenation laws at times prohibited passing on inheritances to spouses and offspring from interracial marriages. How did inheritance practices contribute to the growth and reproduction of social and racial inequality?
  2. Property: How did the amount and composition of wealth to be passed down affect inheritance practices? What if there was no property? What about the inheritance of debts? How did the relative significance of different types of property change over the course of the twentieth century? What impact did the rise of finance and financialization have on inheritance?
  3. Social actors: What forms did estate planning take over the course of the twentieth century? How did the outlooks of testators and heirs toward the future affect inheritance practices? How did expectations of an inheritance (or of not receiving an inheritance) affect the life planning of heirs? What organizations and professionals – so-called wealth managers – (lawyers, accountants, bankers, notaries, religious institutions) influenced the transfer of wealth in the twentieth century?
  4. Periodization: The history of bequeathing and inheriting has barely been periodized. What continuities and/or discontinuities can we see in inheritance practices during the twentieth century? How might we periodize and explain possible changes?

Format

Papers will be pre-circulated four weeks in advance, and at the workshop participants will deliver short introductory remarks to start the discussion. These remarks will be no longer than ten minutes. A publication might follow. The language of the papers and the workshop will be English. 

The GHI will provide a lump sum to participants for travel, and we are currently seeking further financial support. To apply, please send a 500 word abstract and a one-page cv to fabricius@ghi-dc.org by Feb 28, 2017. If you have further questions please contact Jürgen Dinkel (dinkel@ghi.dc.org)