The process of reunifying East and West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall involved months of negotiations among German leaders and with international powers. Rather than rushing to immediate reunification, German officials and their allies took time to address legal, economic, and security concerns, ensuring a stable and lasting outcome.
Bad Blood
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. This investigative account of the Theranos scandal highlights how rapid, sometimes reckless, decision-making is embedded in American startup culture. Executives and investors often made decisions quickly to seize opportunities, sometimes at the expense of thoroughness. The book underscores both the benefits and dangers of the “move fast, fix later” approach.
Stringency
Analysis. Latin analysis, Greek análysis: to pull apart, dissolve into parts; to study something by taking it apart and considering its individual components; investigation into the particulars of a whole.
Analytical thinking is in those professions critical where a system is understood via its parts. A psychoanalyst pulls apart the patient’s past experiences. The financial analyst considers the entire spectrum of transactions in order to get into the details of specific market movements. Police investigative work, all approaches in medicine, every type of research and development must employ sophisticated methods of analysis.
Stringent. Latin stringens: strict; convincing based on logical arguments; logical, clear, without internal contradiction.
Stringent analytical methods are particularly important in the academic fields, whether the natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics or the humanities. Master’s or Ph.D. theses in Germany are not accepted without meeting high standards of analytical stringency. All professions based on deep analysis depend on stringent methods.
Penetranz. Penetration: Latin penetrare: to place into; to enter into, get into, to move in a certain direction.
To be penetrating has a negative connotation in Germany: overly direct, bearing in on a point, intense. A certain perfume can be too penetrant. A person who dominates a conversation, making long speeches and moralizing is penetrant.
In the positive sense penetrant means dogged, focused, determined, working to understand something at as deep a level as possible. Like an archeologist who digs deeper, forever searching for evidence, for insight into the lives of our human ancestors. The same goes for analysts of any kind, for the medical profession, for linguists, historians and research in all of its forms.
Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) comes to mind, the German archeologist who discovered the ancient cities of Troja and Mykenes. Many years of painstaking research led to archeological and historical proof that these two cities had in fact existed.
Scholz indecision
(Bloomberg) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces intense pressure from members of his ruling coalition to step up deliveries of heavy weapons such as tanks and fighter jets to help Ukraine fight Russian troops. After initiating an historic reversal in Germany’s previously frugal defense policy in the early stages of the war, Scholz has since appeared hesitant to go beyond initial supplies.
Triple Alliance
Patience played a significant role in Germany’s decision to join and shape the Triple Alliance. German leadership, particularly under Bismarck, approached alliance-building with careful, deliberate diplomacy, allowing the nature and stakes of the decision to dictate the pace rather than succumbing to external pressures or hasty proposals.
Historical records show that German diplomats were wary of rushing into agreements, especially when approached by Britain about joining the alliance. The German government interpreted Britain’s urgency as a sign of British weakness and saw no reason to accelerate their own decision-making process. Instead, they used the opportunity to negotiate from a position of strength, raising their own terms and ensuring that any agreement would serve Germany’s long-term strategic interests.
Additionally, the process of forming and maintaining the Triple Alliance itself was marked by careful negotiation and patience. Germany prioritized frontier security and the stability of its alliances with Austria-Hungary and Italy, weighing the benefits and risks over time rather than making impulsive decisions based on immediate diplomatic overtures. German diplomats often delayed or slowed negotiations, insisting on clarity and thoroughness before committing to any binding agreements.
In summary, Germany’s approach to joining the Triple Alliance exemplified the national logic that the timing and nature of major decisions should be determined by strategic considerations and patience, not by the urgency of external actors or short-term pressures.
Germany puts hold on North Stream 2
For weeks the German government was reluctant to commit to including stopping North Stream 2 as a key element in sanctiones against Russia should it invade Ukraine.
BERLIN, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Germany on Tuesday halted the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline project, designed to double the flow of Russian gas direct to Germany, after Russia formally recognised two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.
Europe’s most divisive energy project, worth $11 billion, was finished in September, but has stood idle pending certification by Germany and the European Union.
The pipeline had been set to ease the pressure on European consumers facing record energy prices amid a wider post-pandemic cost of living crisis, and on governments that have already forked out billions to try to cushion the impact on consumers.
Mr. German man loves insurance
An American woman. Married to a German man. About how her husband, and his friends, are enthusiastic about insurance. And about how shocked they were to hear that she, and her American friends, never even heard of such kinds of insurance.
Warning ! This woman is a youtuber. And an American on top. So, she is more than a bit animated. And frankly, she could have made her points in about two minutes instead of seven and a half.
Pride comes before the fall
Deutsche Telekom – German Telecom – has had several stock offerings. Its first in 1996 was accompanied by a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign which was a huge success.
People who had never owned stocks flocked to the T-Aktie, to T-Shares. The Aktieneuphorie – stock market euphoria – in Germany lasted for several years.
The share price at the first offering was 28.50 DM (14.57 Euros), at the second 39.50 Euros, then 66.50 Euros. On March 6, 2000 the T-Aktie hit its highpoint of 103.50 Euros.
From there it was all downhill. On September 30, 2002 it was at 8.42 Euros. At the beginning of 2015 it just about at 16 Euros.
Shareholders sued Deutsche Telekom in 2008 in Frankfurt. Their claim was that Deutsche Telekom misinformed them about the true value of the company’s real estate holdings, as well as other incorrect statements in their financial statements.
Over 17,000 shareholders demanded roughly 80 million Euros in damages. The court case focused on whether the shareholders were sufficiently informed about the level of risk.
The marketing hype of the T-Aktie was criticized by the shareholders after the fact. “Such marketing campaigns are not appropriate for selling stocks. This isn’t laundry detergent, not toothpaste,” said Jürgen Kurz, head of the German Society for the Protection of Securities Holders. “People should buy stocks in companies, but they should be informed about the risk they are taking.”
The Süddeutsche Zeitung – one of Germany’s leading newspapers located in Munich – wrote at the end of 2014: “The T-Aktie is not just any old stock. It’s a symbol. It made Germans hungry to invest in stocks, and then killed that appetite for years to come. The investors felt cheated, tricked. Unrequited love. Today only half as many Germans hold stocks as in 2000.”
dangers to haste
In Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, the decline of a merchant family is depicted through generations, with characters often engaging in lengthy deliberations about business and personal decisions. In The Magic Mountain, the protagonist Hans Castorp spends years in a sanatorium, using this time for philosophical reflection and gradual decision-making about his life’s direction. Mann’s works frequently explore the virtue of patience and the dangers of succumbing to haste or external pressures.