Emphasis on Amicable Resolution: The German Mediation Act and civil procedure (§ 278 ZPO) encourage settlement at every stage, with mediators or conciliation judges empowered to use all appropriate methods—including separate interviews—to resolve disputes amicably.
Weak link?
Germany wants to come up with a national security strategy (NSS) by the end of 2022. The new government started out with great ambitions in security and defense policy. However, for many allies, Germany seems to be once again a weak link and an unreliable partner in European defense. Instead of focusing on security, it should focus on a strategy for action in the event of conflict. This requires to broaden the concept of security and include more policy fields, especially technology, innovation, and internal security.
Germany’s new government started out with great ambitions in security and defense policy. The first statements and foreign trips of the new government officials to France, Poland, the US, and Ukraine, were reassuring.
However, after this rather ambitious start, hesitations, inconsistent action and messaging vis-à-vis allies, worries about how the German public would perceive government decisions, and irritatingly over-cautious moves towards Russia, have overshadowed initial impressions. For many allies, Germany seems to be once again a weak link and an unreliable partner in European defense.
“Good things need their time”
The German expression Gut Ding will Weile haben – good things need their time – states that things which are supposed to turn out good will need some time. This becomes clear especially when important decisions are to be addressed:
“Quality before speed: Merkel pulls the brakes at the introduction of new supervision of European banks.” (Handelsblatt 17.2.2015)
“The German Handball Federation President Bauer: “Quality comes before speed.“ (Lahner Zeitung 20.6.2014)
“NPD-Ban: Quality before speed.” (Hamburger Abendblatt 9.12.2011)
Historikerstreit
The Historikerstreit (Historians’ Dispute) of the 1980s. This major public debate among German historians centered on how to interpret and assign responsibility for the Holocaust and National Socialism. Two main camps—intentionalists (who argued for planned intent behind Nazi crimes) and functionalists (who emphasized structural and circumstantial factors)—relied heavily on documentary evidence, archival research, and systematic analysis to reconstruct the causes of these events. The dispute exemplified Germany’s insistence on rigorous, evidence-based inquiry and the search for historical truth, even in highly politicized contexts.
Wannsee Documentation
The Wannsee Conference Documentation (1942). The discovery and use of the minutes from the Wannsee Conference, where senior Nazi officials coordinated the “Final Solution,” became a cornerstone in understanding the bureaucratic and systematic nature of the Holocaust. These documents provided incontrovertible evidence of planning and intent, shaping both legal reckoning and historical understanding in postwar Germany.
Paragraph vs. Case
It is a well known fact that the German and the American legal systems have fundamental differences between them. The modern German legal system is based on ancient Roman law, combined with a bit of French and old Germanic law, but all of it follows the paragraph law structure.
The American system is derived from the English case law tradition, which follows the law as it was laid out by judicial verdicts in actual previous cases. Key cases providing precedence are reviewed to determine how to continue.
Justice (Gerechtigkeit) and judgement are closely connected in the American system. Not just the concrete facts of the case, but also the circumstances are considered to be crucial information for the deliberations and verdict. These then must be interpreted with regard to the complex nature of the human existence.
A task which only persons with sufficient experience with life as well as with people are capable of. This experience – or the wisdom that comes from such experience – is something which only older people can have.
This is why Americans are always astounded when they hear that in Germany relatively young people – in their early 30s – can become judges. Many of the district attorneys that they see on German television look as if they were fresh out of law school.
According to the American understanding of judicial power, paragraph laws play a minor part. Case law is so difficult precisely because it concerns situations which are not found in a German book of federal law.
This is why American judges must be older people who are truly good and wise. Their process too involves stringent scientific methods of analysis, not unlike German paragraph laws. These, from the American perspective, can not deliver more than just the pure facts.
The ability to take these facts and interpret them, to make sense of them, this is what they view as true good judgement. Knowledge of methodology and analytical processes may support one’s good judgement, but can never amount to the equivalent.
Cost-benefit relationship
Langlebig. Long lasting, to work over many years; effective over a long period of time; functional, usable over an extended period of time.
Germans prefer products which last a long time, rarely need repair or replacement, and pay for themselves several times over. The unstable economic times of the 20th century have taught the Germans to calculate precisely and carefully the relation between investment and use.
Residential homes and automobiles in Germany, for example, are much more expensive than in other countries. On the other hand they are often of higher quality, meet higher standards. The Germans will pay more, however, for many other kinds of products, such as furniture, household appliances, tools, and clothing.
Many well-known, but expensive brands continue to command customer loyalty. They are of high quality and solid durability. They offer a sense of security to the German consumer.
Although Germans in general like the newest in technology, they are bothered by the fact that many electronics – computers, television sets, mobile phones – are improved upon in ever shorter product development cycles. In those cases it is rarely worth it to invest in expensive models.
Durability, reliability, and quality are product attributes not easily distinguishable. Durability is a question of how long a product lasts. Reliability is about how well it performs. And quality is a general term encompassing many product attributes, but focused primarly on craftsmanship.
Efficient and inefficient
Many of the most popular brands of children’s toys in the U.S. are wooden toys manufactured by fairly small companies. Compared to mass-produced plastic toys from China, they are inefficient to produce and more expensive to ship. Quality and design is the focus, not speed or quantity.
American-made tools: The websites of popular American toolmakers such as Snap On and Craftsman include many statements about non-negotiable product quality and safety but make no mention of efficiency. Production of American products often maximizes quality and safety while giving much less attention to efficiency of production.
U.S. health care: The delivery of health care in the United States is perhaps the best example of disregard for efficiency in exchange for safe, high-quality output. According to a report from the Institute of Medicine, „about 30 percent of health spending in 2009 – roughly $750 billion – was wasted on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems.“
The reasons for this waste are complex, but the underlying logic is that in the health care sector (and in most other industries), Americans view a safe, comfortable, and positive output as the primary goal of their activities; therefore, efficiency is often ignored.
U.S. military: The U.S. military spends vast sums of money to achieve the strategic goals of the nation. For example, it costs the U.S. an estimated $1 million dollars to outfit a single soldier in Afghanistan for a year. The U.S. has spent more than $1 trillion dollars fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. The key focus of military operation is achieving the strategic objective (or output); efficiency and costs are rarely discussed. If they are discussed, they are always secondary to achieving the mission.
Federal hiring process: President Obama signed a memorandum in February 2010 ordering the Office of Personnel Management to streamline the federal hiring process. Although implementing this order will vary across different agencies, the act symbolizes a concerted effort to add efficiency to what was previously an incredibly slow and ineffective process.
Hotel chains: Many companies cannot focus exclusively on output while neglecting efficiency. Hotel chains have started to encourage customers to conserve water (thereby increasing efficiency) by re-using towels and not changing linens every day. These campaigns are often marketed as „eco-friendly.“ They are aimed at lowering costs and increasing the company’s efficiency. The output must be of good and uniform quality, but if the company does not operate efficiently, then it will not be profitable.
Assembly line: With the assembly line Henry Ford revolutioned the automotive industry and the way products are produced in almost every industry. This new manufacturing process made building cars more efficient. Because of the increase in efficiency, the cost to produce a car went down and when production costs were lowered, so was the retail price of the cars. Today, almost all products – from faucets to airplanes – are produced in some form of assembly line.
Made in Germany
England in 1887 required all products imported from Germany to be labeled „Made in Germany.“ At the time German products were considered to be of substandard quality. Germany was a late-comer to the industrial revolution, much later than England. A famous German engineer admitted that German products were “cheap and nasty.”
Many were enraged, but it led to a national discussion and a quality offensive. At the beginning of the 20th Century, and especially in the post-World War II era, „Made in Germany“ took on a new meaning: high quality, newest technology. It became synonymous with West Germany‘s economic miracle of the 1950s.
The Germans recognized the importance of such a label, of the reputation of their products. They became particularly proud of their technical and economic achievements. Germans continue to view their products as having high quality, often as being the best in the world. From the early 1980s until recently Germany was the world‘s leading exporter.
The label “Made in Germany” is used less today than in the past, however. A minimum amount of a product’s parts must be produced in Germany before it can boast “Made in Germany.”
Modern German industrial and technology companies, however, have segmented their supply chains to include manufacturing sites and suppliers in many parts of the world. Nonetheless, the label “Made in Germany” remains a key, positive element in the self-understanding of every German.
Knowledge Society
Because Germany has few natural resources, its economy has had to produce high quality, high technology products and services.
In politics, economics and the media the Germans stress time and again the importance of maintaining a knowledge society, of education as its key resource. Germany‘s high standard of living, its high level of social welfare services, can only be financed if it can continue to develop and market high margin goods and services. The Germans stress, therefore, the need to produce generations of scientists and engineers.
There is consensus across the country on this point. Every chancellor, state governor, head of a major German company stresses time and again how critical it is to stay on the cutting edge of science, engineering, technology. Germany sees itself as the land of ideas, recognizes that its future depends on it producing breakthrough ideas.