What is the Gliedertaxe?

Published premium figures for Germany and the payouts calculated from the table, sum insured EUR 100,000 to EUR 150,000.

The Gliedertaxe is the calculating core of every German private accident policy (private Unfallversicherung). It gives each body part and each sense a fixed percentage. If you lose the part, or it can permanently do no work at all, you get the full percentage. If some function remains, you get the matching share: a hand that only works at half strength gives half the hand percentage.

That percentage is your degree of permanent impairment (Invaliditätsgrad), and the degree times your sum insured is the payout. Note one thing that surprises most people arriving from abroad: there is no statutory table. The German insurance association publishes a non-binding recommendation, and every insurer writes its own version into the wording. This is exactly where two offers that look identical on the cover page differ.

An improved table (verbesserte Gliedertaxe) sets higher percentages than the industry recommendation. Guides mention it in passing and almost never do the arithmetic, although this is where the money sits: with the same sum insured and the same injury, one contract pays several times what the other pays. How much each insurer improves is up to that insurer, nothing about it is standardised.

There is a second effect that is nearly always missed. Progression, the clause that raises the payout for severe cases, usually starts at a degree of 26 percent. An improved table pushes some injuries above that line, and only then does progression add anything. A thumb at 20 percent stays below it; the same thumb at 60 percent is above it.

If several body parts are affected, the percentages are added up. The ceiling is 100 percent: an arm at 70 plus hearing in one ear at 30 makes exactly 100, and further injuries add nothing. If everything concerns the same arm or the same leg, the insurer sets one overall degree for that limb instead of adding items.

Body parts that do not appear in the table, such as the back, the head or internal organs, are assessed individually when you claim. The measure is how far your physical or mental capacity is impaired overall, compared with an average person of the same age and sex. If a limb was already impaired before the accident, that earlier impairment (Vorinvalidität) is deducted. And if illness contributed to the lasting damage, the insurer reduces the payout accordingly; good wordings only count this contribution (Mitwirkung) above a high share.

It never asks what you do for a living. A pianist and a bookkeeper get the same percentage for the same finger, even though for one of them the loss ends a career. Your job affects the premium, not the payout. If you want your income protected, you need occupational disability insurance (Berufsunfähigkeitsversicherung); accident insurance does not replace it.

And it only applies to accidents. A slipped disc without an accident, a stroke or cancer trigger nothing, however generous the percentages. Deadlines matter too: the impairment usually has to arise within a set number of months after the accident, be confirmed by a doctor and be claimed within the period named in the wording. Those documents and the claim correspondence are normally in German, and the German wording is what counts.