Power Archives - understand-culture

The Euro on the Bundesbank Model

In November 2003 the Bundesbank described the rules of the euro as die weitgehend am Vorbild der Deutschen Bundesbank orientierte „Währungsordnung von Maastricht“, the Maastricht monetary order, largely modeled on the Bundesbank. Important elements of the German monetary constitution, it wrote, had entered at the European level.

The goal of price stability and the rules for the European System of Central Banks, it wrote, were the Geschäftsgrundlage, the basis of the deal, for the monetary union when Germany gave up the D-Mark.

Killed With Kindness

In 1994 BMW bought the British carmaker Rover for two billion marks. On 16 March 2000 it sold Rover again, for the symbolic sum of ten pounds. The losses were reported to be nine billion marks. BMW’s chief executive Pischetsrieder had already had to resign in 1999.

Looking back in 2015, the British magazine CAR wrote that the Germans had “killed Rover with kindness, moving too slowly on integration”. The magazine noted that in 1996 it had already exposed the failure to pool engineering and purchasing quickly.

In this case the German owner was slow to take over the processes.

The Supplier’s Rulebook

Volkswagen Group has its own set of rules for suppliers, called Formel Q. The supplier EJOT describes it as a comprehensive set of rules with contractually agreed requirements for the quality of processes and products in procurement and the supply chain. All suppliers to the group must meet them. The processes are audited, usually every three years.

The Works Council Election at Tesla

In March 2024 the workers at Tesla’s car factory in Grünheide elected a works council. The IG Metall list received 3,516 of 8,917 valid votes and 16 of 39 seats. It was the strongest list, but it had no majority. Elon Musk had warned that an outside body whose interests might not match Tesla’s would not be good.

The union’s candidates wanted a say in how the line runs. One of them said: Und deshalb brauchen wir längere Taktzeiten. And that is why we need longer cycle times. They also asked for more predictable planning and weekends.

In March 2026 the IG Metall list fell to 13 of 37 seats.

Words for Having the Say

das Sagen haben — to have the say. Wer hat hier das Sagen? Who has the say here?

Herr im eigenen Haus — master in one’s own house. Said of someone who decides how things are done on his own ground.

Deutungshoheit — sovereignty of interpretation. The authority to decide what something means.

Herr der Prozesse — master of the processes. A headline in the IT weekly Computerwoche in November 2008, about a company that settled who owns its processes before it introduced new software.

One in Six Secretariats

According to the federal economics ministry, Germany holds about 17 percent of all ISO secretariats, the offices that lead the international standards committees. DIN holds almost 29 percent of all secretariats in the European Committee for Standardization. A DIN chart of 2021 put DIN first among national bodies in leading ISO secretariats, ahead of the American ANSI and the British BSI.

A DIN presentation of June 2021 explained the point. Durch die Leitung von Technischen Komitees können strategische Felder besetzt werden. By leading technical committees, strategic fields can be occupied. The same slide carried the saying Wer schreibt, der bleibt. Who writes, remains.

In 2025 the head of DIN added that China, which a few years earlier had led fewer than 2 percent of the committees, now led 11 percent.

Whoever Sets the Standard

Wer die Norm setzt, macht den Markt. Whoever sets the standard makes the market. Klaus Wucherer, a member of the Siemens managing board, said it in September 2006, at the opening of a world congress of the electrical and IT industry. In 2007 the director of DIN, Torsten Bahke, said: Wer den Standard setzt, hat den Markt.

A version of the saying is often attributed to Werner von Siemens. No source for that attribution has been found. In 2012 Werner Fischer, who headed standardization at Siemens, put the thought another way. Wenn wir nicht normen, dann werden wir genormt. If we do not set standards, standards will be set for us.

The General Regulations of the Krupp Works

In 1872 Alfred Krupp issued a 22-page rulebook for his works, the General-Regulativ für die Firma Fried. Krupp in Essen. It set out principles and rights for the operation and administration of the firm and imposed strict duties on all employees. Union and Social Democratic activity was forbidden.

On 11 February 1877 Krupp addressed his employees. … wer unsern Ordnungen widerstrebt, der beeile sich auf anderen Boden zu kommen. Whoever resists our rules should hurry to find other ground. The editors of the source collection German History in Documents call it his patriarchal claim to be Herr im Hause, master in the house.

The Wires That Did Not Fit

In 2006 Airbus announced delays of up to a year for the A380. The plane carries about 500 kilometers of wiring. Engineers in Germany and Spain had worked with an older version of the design software, CATIA 4, while the teams in France and Britain used CATIA 5. Data were lost in the transfer from one system to the other.

According to the Seattle Times, the engineers in Germany had refused to change and went on working with the older version. Airbus’s head of production, Tom Williams, said: “We were just storing up a long-term problem.”

Adapt the Processes to the Software

SAP brought its standard business software R/3 to market in 1992. In 2008 the magazine CIO quoted Andreas Werner-Scheer of Münchner Hypothekenbank on what standard software requires: die Prozesse den Gegebenheiten der Software anzupassen und nicht umgekehrt, to adapt the processes to the software, and not the reverse.

Business managers argue against it, Paul Riedo of Swisscom told the same magazine. Wenn wir alles standardisiert haben, dann unterscheiden wir uns ja nicht mehr vom Wettbewerb. If we have standardized everything, we are no longer different from the competition. If we had asked the specialist departments what they wanted, Werner-Scheer said, hätten wir 70 Prozent Eigenentwicklungen, we would have 70 percent in-house developments.