Insurance: Transitory Concepts by German Russians
By Paul Reeb
In today’s American lifestyle, the need for insurance
is commonly taken for granted as a necessary part of living much
as the household plumbing, treated water and electricity. Seldom,
if ever, does anyone posture the possibility that such elements
can be successfully left out from a functioning society. Yet,
those who enjoy looking into the past to learn of their heritage,
they can readily understand the historical era where household
plumbing, treated water and electricity were not to be had. Then
life did indeed go on without any serious threat to human survival.
“But insurance, what niche in our heritage did that play,”
many would stumble to ask? Yes, the thought would barely enter
anyone’s mind to consider if it were possible for an individual,
an organization, or a total society to function successfully without
the so-called protection of insurance. “How odd to even
think of such a question,” one might easily ask?
My dormant curiosity has been awakened by a unique combination
of events recently occurring within the governing body of our
Germans from Russia Heritage Society. Of course, in a small way,
I have also been involved. The society has not long ago purchased
its first owned home. During the board’s first meeting since
the completion of purchase, not surprisingly, the question of
insurance coverage arose as perhaps the first order of business.
So be it.
What happened may have been a purely a routine matter for the
Germans from Russia Heritage Society (GRHS). But for me, the insurance
question musters memories of an earlier period of my life, experiences
also qualified by some reading and a college classroom. But more
precisely, the immediate catalyst reawakening my past experiences
came through my reading of the GRHS’s board minutes for
27 March 1982. Two particular paragraphs attracted my scrutiny.
The first states:
“The question of obtaining adequate insurance coverage
on the condominium unit for liability to third persons was referred
to Mr. Hammel and Chris Leingang and Herb Messmer.”
However, preceding this paragraph, the minutes revealed that
Mr. Hammel, who is not a board member, was “introduced to
the board” and thereafter, by due process, he was appointed
to serve as the Society’s representative on the yet-to-be-seated
Condominium Association Board of Directors. In Mr. Hammel’s
newly acquired capacity, as soon as the business of insurance
coverage was acted upon, he was dispatched from the meeting to
immediately take care of the board’s mandated concern. Acting
expeditiously, Mr. Hammel was able to return back to the meeting
before the board’s adjournment. Whereupon the minutes, covered
by the second paragraph attracting my scrutiny. It reads:
“Mr. Hammel returned to the meeting and reported that he
had obtained $300,000 of liability insurance on the condominium
unit for personal liability.”
What I find interesting here is the manner of urgency with which
the question of insurance was dispensed with. One gets the impression
that here they dealt with a commodity commanding greater priority
than plumbing, treated water or electricity. This, in the year
1982, about a century after the first German Russians began settling
America’s Great Plains.
But, in the 1920s, six decades ago, Richard Sallet said something
quite different about our pioneering grandparents when composing
his doctoral thesis which was published in German in 1931. He
wrote:
“Although the Russian-Germans are extremely frugal and
progressive, it is very difficult to convince them to insure themselves
against accidents. For example, the percentage of (these) German
farmers who are insured against hail is small. While life insurance
for the American has come to be almost taken for granted, one
finds relatively few Russian-German heads of families who have
life insurance. This is once again typical of their deeply religious
attitude which views a hail storm as a trial by God and life insurance
as superfluous because of the strong ties within the family.”
1
Though Sallet slides over the insurance spectrum rather casually,
I personally would have allowed the topic more weight. The 19th
century German-Russian ideological concepts affecting attitudes
on this topic are deep grained. For some interesting insights,
I choose to turn to words often affirmed by my father and his
social colleagues. Even today, the sayings of my father, as I
picture the insurance peddler in a Model-T Ford coming up our
country lane, ring sharply and clearly in my mind. Bethinking
my father’s mental entrenchment caused my head to sink about
the time the agent had stopped his clattering machine and had
eagerly stepped forward to greet us. Invariably, after a good
rain as my father chose to do some yard cleaning, and I by his
side, those would be days peddlers would show up, they knowing
that farmers would be not busy in the fields. Before he spoke
his first word, already my mental defenses were pitched against
this shrewd gambler, unscrupulous money taker, smooth talker,
social parasite, maker of false promises, tempter into dishonesty,
etc., etc. Forty-five minutes later, and I having heaved a sigh
of relief, the peddler’s car again had hit the dusty trail
without my father having signed any papers.
“It would be defying God’s providence against a pay-off
from the insurance company, and that makes it so sinful,”
my father said. Then beginning his usual long spiel, he reaffirmed
again that his forebears had the unshaken faith and trust in the
Divine promise allowing nobody to hunger who earned their bread
by the sweat of their brow. “Just think,” he would
say asserting, “that agent and his fancy car produce nothing
that anyone can eat!” Impressingly, he propounded the notion
that the affluent living of those agents and their office staff,
plus the construction and upkeep of all those tall skyscrapers
in New York City, had to come out of the pockets of farmers who
worked from dawn to dusk the year around in summer’s scorching
heat and winter’s biting cold. “Those agents,”
he repeated, “are crawling leeches that suck blood out of
the enslaved suckers who are dumb enough to fall for their smooth
talk.” The entire insurance institution, in his view, was
clearly a huge parasitic monster dragging down the whole of society.
“And is it not a form of gambling, pinning your luck against
an insurance pay-off!” my father would repeat once more
for good measure. Of course, everyone knew only too well the villainous
consequences of gambling.
Curiously though, during the 1930s and 1940s, young German-Russian
farmers began to experiment with taking out hail insurance. They
soon learned, however, that they were one-fifth hailed out the
minute they bought a policy, and they could never recover more
than 80% even when totally hailed out. Seldom would hail damage
awards exceed the amounts paid out in premium. Ten to fifteen
years of playing the role of the “sucker” finally
put most grain farmers into the category of the wiser when it
came to taking out hail insurance. The admonition of the “old
timers” had to be learned the hard way.
My second year in college seemed far removed from those childhood
experiences on the farm where insurance peddlers would periodically
pester my father. Yet, one day, this feeling also was changed.
On a Monday morning, the professor in Philosophy 2 abruptly announced
that for the entire week he would give lectures on the merits
and demerits of the insurance system. It was to be a week without
assigned outside reading. He wanted our minds to remain uncluttered
to better listen to his message. Hurray! That sounded great. Reflecting
upon my own background, the announcement left me curious, I actually
looked forward to hearing another slant, perhaps?
“Oh!” exclaimed the Professor Dr. Frank Dickinson
moments later, “If car chains were to be outlawed, there
would be a lot less accidents on icy roads.” We students
jerked in our seats and looked at him dumbfounded by this incredible
statement. “Yes,” he added, “drivers without
tire chains mounted would drive extra cautiously because of their
sudden awareness to the extreme hazards being encountered, while
drivers using chains get a false sense of security and consequently
take extra risks.” He then elaborated further for another
ten minutes just to bear out his point. His wrap-up conclusion,
“So it is with having car insurance, those drivers too often
beset themselves with a certain degree of mental laziness; whereas,
otherwise, they would think more responsibly and be more cautious.”
The rest of his lecture for that class period turned into a mind-boggling
glum picture of the overall institutional insurance system. And
his refrain, that day, strikingly paralleled what I had before
heard from my father. But the grayish-tinted dignified- looking
professor, considering his surname, could not have been of German-Russian
extraction. It puzzled me then, and still does.
“Insurance,” the sharp-witted professor asserted
the next day, “frames the mind into accepting a state of
fatalism which shirks all individual and social responsibility.
Human minds become so programmed into complete dependence upon
outside assistance for every major and minor human experience
that all behavior reactions become totally puppet like. Thinking
ceases to be required. The medical doctor is expected to take
care of Joe Doe’s backache. The mechanic is supposed to
take care of his car. The pastor has the responsibility to get
him into heaven. The lawyer is to save him from legal entanglements.
The banker is relied upon to keep him floating in money. And finally,
the insurance company, for a generous fee, is supposedly going
to take care of all the catch-alls that can’t be fitted
anywhere else; and furthermore, they offer him the assurance of
compensation should in this circus ring of professional servants
any malpractice occur. That is the most fascinating merry-go-round.”
Now, years later, the vision of those class sessions again reflashes
in my mind. How astounding that the college professor’s
prevailing theme exuded during his insurance sessions hand-in-gloved
with my own father’s philosophical mainstay, “Stay
clear of all system promoters.” To accomplish his set-apart
image, my father relied heavily on a few cornerstone credos: be
self-reliant, be your own boss, work out your own problems, take
the consequential attitude, anticipate and be prepared, fix all
you can yourself, live within your means, stay debt free; manage
your own finances, put the most faith in your own judgment, beware
of smooth talkers, and, finally, read and interpret your own Bible.
“Doing all these,” he would say, “who needs
insurance?”
My father reached 83, and unrelentingly staunch in his beliefs,
he never took out a single insurance policy of any kind. Still,
he accumulated land and savings like all frugal German-Russians;
survived the Great Depression without a dent; provided higher
education for all his children; and never suffered the less in
his retirement years, he paid his own way all the way and still
left a nest egg. By not taking out any insurance, he bucked the
trend, and proved to himself that it could be done.
To the last, he would like to hammer away, at any opportunity,
at espousing his “pet notions” as they became commonly
called. Perhaps most lastingly, his favorite earthy “notion”
remained: “To be wasteful is stupid and sinful,” and
if he had a chance, he’d likely add, “and insurance
is just that!” And one could rest assured that his basic
moral scruples were never left unsurfaced either. He’d voice
the strongest objection to any scheming and abusive manipulation
for exacting wrongful gain through insurance. Hence, to him, the
system inherently hatched temptations for dishonesty and offered
a license for irresponsibility.
Now, in the year 1982, how differently and lightly we, the most
of us, take the matter of insurance. I choose to read the minutes
of the 27 March GRHS board meeting once more, and ask whether,
just maybe, there should be made room to ponder the above observed
heritage a little more?
1. Richard Sallet, Russian-German Settlements in the United States,
trans. by La Vern J. Rippley and Armand Bauer, Minneapolis, The
Lund Press, 1974, pp. 86, 87.
