In addition to health insurance, there are four other types of social insurance in Germany: pension, long-term care, accident, and unemployment insurance. If you have an employment contract in Germany and earn more than 520 euros per month (as of March 2025), you are subject to social insurance contributions and automatically pay contributions to all social insurance schemes from your salary. Employer and employee each pay about half of the contributions. Contributions to statutory accident insurance are paid by the employer alone. Accident insurance and pension insurance are particularly relevant to you during a research stay at the University of Augsburg.

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Anyone enrolled or working at the University of Augsburg is automatically covered by statutory accident insurance in the event of an accident at work, on the way to work, or on the way home. Such accidents must be reported immediately to the student information office or the human resources department. Private accident insurance (see: "Optional Insurance Schemes") can also be taken out to cover accidents in a private context.

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Crediting of pension periods

EU member states, EEA states (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway), Switzerland and treaty partners must take into account pension periods completed in Germany when checking their eligibility requirements.

Insurance periods from a state with which the Federal Republic of Germany has not concluded a social security agreement cannot be added together with German insurance periods to meet the eligibility requirements.

If you have worked in different states in the course of your professional life and paid contributions to the respective social security system, you should enquire about your entitlements in good time with the insurance institutions of the individual states. Note that the minimum periods (i.e., the number of years of contributions) for a pension entitlement may vary from country to country.
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As a general rule, there is no provision for payment of a total pension by one state taking into account periods of insurance in the other states. Exceptions exist only to avoid small pensions. Therefore, in each country where you have been insured and have paid pension insurance contributions, the pension insurance contributions will continue until you reach the retirement age provided for by the legislation of that state. The insurance institution of each state grants pensions according to its national regulations. This means that you may receive different pensions.

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Refund of pension contributions

If you return to a country with which there is no social security agreement, you can have your pension contributions paid in Germany refunded.
After a waiting period of 2 years, you can apply to the German Pension Insurance for a refund of contributions.

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