Paul Mayet

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Paul Mayet

Paul Mayet (born May 11, 1846 in Berlin ; died January 9, 1920 ) was a German financial and social expert. He was a highly educated scientist who is known on the one hand for his work as a financial advisor in Japan from 1876 to 1893, on the other hand for his involvement in German maternity protection legislation.

life and work

Paul Mayet was born the son of the secret accountant Louis Mayet (1808-1873), who came from a Huguenot family. From 1865 to 1866 he studied in Lausanne, then two semesters in Berlin and then five semesters in Leipzig, natural sciences, psychology and economics with the aim of an academic career. For health reasons he gave up his studies and practically worked in pulp manufacture until 1873.

Japan

By chance Mayet became aware of Japan at the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873 and began to study the country. Recommended by Franz von Holtzendorff , he soon afterwards presented the Japanese ambassador Aoki with a treatise on the introduction of the savings bank system in Japan. In order to give Mayet the opportunity to get to know the economic situation in Japan from his own perspective, Aoki offered him a currently open position as a lecturer for German and Latin at the medical academy, which was soon assigned to the newly founded university as the medical faculty. Aoki also gave him a recommendation to one of Japan's most important statesmen, Kido . About the beginning of his activity in Japan, Mayet noted:

  • “In January 1876 I arrived in Japan, took up my teaching post and in the summer of that year was already entrusted by Kido with the preparation of an expert opinion on the replacement of the hereditary family pensions of the high and low nobility. I was fortunate enough to have a decisive influence on this law, which the envoy in Berlin had already described to me as the most important for Japan at the moment. The magnitude of the measure is already evident from the figures: it was 4,000,000 Koku perpetual rice harvest (= approx. 7,200,000 hectoliters of rice annually), payable to almost 400,000 aristocratic families with capital (in the final determination approx. 75,000,000 yen, according to the exchange rate at that time approx. 700,000,000 marks) in the form of redeemable government bonds. "

and at the end:

  • "Immediately after the publication of my book" The Fall of the Japanese Peasant Class "at the beginning of June 1893, I left Japan (on June 17 this year) to return to Germany."

Back in Germany

Because of his work on agricultural insurance in Japan, in which he formulated numerous proposals for improving the situation of rice farmers, he received the degree of Dr. rer. pole. of the University of Tübingen and in 1890 the title of Prussian professor. In Japan itself, this fundamental work initially found no practical response until the 1940s. Mayet returned to Germany in 1893 and in 1894 became a research assistant in the Imperial Statistical Office, who was responsible for health insurance statistics . There he stood out above all with his work on the most important morbidity and mortality statistics of the German Reich (based on documents from the Leipziger Ortskrankenkasse).

Mayet volunteered for the introduction of maternity leave and was co-founder (1905) and 1st chairman of the "Society for Social Medicine, Hygiene and Medical Statistics" in Berlin. A few weeks before his death his last work was published, "Illegitimate mothers, their need and rescue", in which he advocated the establishment of nursing and nursing rooms for pregnant women and women who have recently given birth, an idea that he not only worked for years dedicated, but also made large financial contributions.

literature

  • Reiko Shoya and Florian Tennstedt : Social reform in Meiji Japan and in Wilhelminian Germany - the work of Paul Mayet. In: Journal for Social Reform, Ed .: Heinke (among others), Issue 9 / 10,24. Born in 1978, Verlag Chmielorz, Wiesbaden, pp. 641–662.
  • Paul Mayet. In: Japan Handbook. Steiniger-Verlage Berlin, 1942. pp. 110, 111.
  • Without author ( Martin Ramming  ?): German work in Japan during the Meiji period. 1. Dr. Paul Mayet. In: Nippon Zeitschrift - für Japanologie , 1936. pp. 217 to 224.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Shoya and Tennstedt: Sozialreform
  2. ↑ a b printed in "Nippon"
personal data
SURNAME Mayet, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German finance and social expert
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1920