On the Results of the Operations of the Gotha Life Assurance Bank for the first Twenty-five Years of its existence, particularly with respect to the Mortality amongst the Lives Assured

Extract

The Gotha Life Assurance Bank was founded at a time when there existed scarcely any knowledge of life assurance in Germany. Some former attempts to found such a Company had failed for this reason, and the few life assurances which were sought at that time by Germans, especially in the Hanseatic towns, could only be effected with English Companies. An essential change has taken place in this respect since the year 1827, when, by the establishment of the Life Assurance Bank for Germany at Gotha, the desire for life assurance was awakened, and its signification and meaning were explained and advanced by numerous publications. Since that time life assurance has risen in Germany as in no other country, with the exception of England. Excepting England, no country so abounds as Germany in self-denying heads of families, who find an impulse upon their minds to provide for their families beyond their own dissolution, and who endeavour to satisfy this impulse even with slender means. Such a susceptible soil could not but prove fertile to such as understood how to cultivate it.