The phrase is American, from Louis Sullivan. The building tradition that carried it furthest was German — the Bauhaus, and the functionalist architecture of the Weimar years.
Ornament removed, the structure left visible, the purpose of the thing made legible in its shape. Sachlichkeit as a building.
Bedenkzeit. Time to think it over. A German negotiating and mediating convention: a party may ask for it, and asking is not read as weakness or delay. The request is granted as a matter of course, and often proposed by the mediator.
Skilled worker — a formal status, not a description. It follows completion of the dual training and the chamber examination, and it appears on pay scales and job adverts as a qualification. German has a word that distinguishes a worker who has been certified in a trade from one who has not, and the distinction has consequences.
Ermessensspielraum. German administrative law grants officials a defined room for judgment within a rule, and a decision can be challenged for failing to exercise it as well as for exceeding it. The discretion is part of the rule, with its own boundaries.
To pull someone across the table. The German phrase for getting the better of a counterpart in a way that is not legitimate. The image is physical and one-sided. Someone has been moved from their position by force rather than by argument, and the table — the place where the negotiation happened — is what they were dragged over.
Zuverlässig — reliable, from sich verlassen auf, to rely upon. The same word is used of a machine and of a person, and it is among the strongest compliments in German for either.
Es läuft — it runs. Said of a machine, a process or a business, and it means everything is as it should be.
Da kann nichts passieren — nothing can happen there. The German assurance, and it is stated absolutely.
German insurance and police reporting distinguish damage to things from injury to people as separate categories, named separately, counted separately. A traffic report states whether there was Sachschaden only.
The division between the matter and the person runs deep enough to structure how accidents are recorded.
Der Instanzenzug. The German court hierarchy provides successive levels of appeal, each with its own full examination. A dispute is expected to take years if it needs to, and the structure is built on the assumption that a first answer may not be the right one.
The German Institute for Standardization maintains tens of thousands of standards covering materials, processes, dimensions, testing, terminology and safety. A standard is a detail that has been settled once so that nobody has to settle it again, and Germany has settled a great many.
Das duale System. German vocational training runs two to three and a half years, with the trainee employed by a company and attending a Berufsschule alongside. It is not an internship and not a course. It is a contract, a curriculum, an examination before the chamber, and a recognised occupation at the end with a name of its own.
Roughly a third of German school leavers enter it, and around 325 occupations are formally recognised under it.