The following extract by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies provides some historical context for the 1911 Imperial Insurance Code.
The 1911 Imperial Insurance Code introduced a common legal framework for the different pillars of the social security system. The sections covering health insurance remained in force, with some modifications, until 1988. In 1989 health insurance regulations were transferred to the Social Code (V). However, the Imperial Insurance Code was passed without addressing any of the physicians’ demands. Physicians threatened to go on strike shortly before the law was to take effect in 1914. In December 1913 the government intervened for the first time in the conflict: the resulting Berlin Convention stipulated that representatives of the physicians and sickness funds were to form joint commissions, thus channeling the conflict into constructive negotiations and introducing the beginnings of today’s system of joint self-government within the SHI scheme.