Die Betriebsanleitung. German product law requires operating instructions in the language of the market, covering intended use, foreseeable misuse, safety, maintenance and disposal. The manual is a legal component of the product. An incomplete one is a defect.
Parental leave
Elternzeit. German parents may take up to three years of leave per child, with the job protected and dismissal prohibited for the duration. It may be split, shared between parents, and partly deferred until the child is eight.
Examining the working
German examination assesses the process as much as the answer. Apprentices are examined on practical execution before a chamber committee. Engineering students show the derivation. A right answer reached the wrong way is marked accordingly.
Usury as a crime
Wucher. Usury is a criminal offence in Germany, not only a civil one. Taking grossly disproportionate advantage of someone’s weakness is prosecuted. The state treats an imbalanced bargain as a matter for the criminal courts.
Product liability
Produkthaftung. German product liability law makes a manufacturer liable for damage caused by a defective product regardless of fault. The obligation runs to the product itself, not to the care taken in making it.
To the things themselves
To the things themselves. Husserl’s demand, and the founding instruction of phenomenology: set aside theory, assumption and inherited interpretation, and attend to what is actually there.
The most abstract philosophical movement Germany produced began by insisting on the concrete.
Clarifying the facts
Sachverhaltsaufklärung. Clarification of the facts. German procedural law obliges a court to establish what actually happened before applying any rule to it, and the phase has its own name and its own stage in the judgment. The facts are settled first, as separate work.
The nine phases
Die Leistungsphasen. German building projects run through nine defined service phases, from basic evaluation through preliminary design, permit planning, execution planning, tendering, construction supervision and final documentation. Each phase has a defined output and a defined share of the fee. The sequence is in the fee ordinance itself.
The shop closing law
German shop opening hours were governed by federal law from 1956, and Sunday closing remains the rule across the country. Shops are shut. Not quiet — shut. A Sunday in a German town is a different kind of day, enforced by statute.
Contrary to good morals
Sittenwidrigkeit. Section 138 BGB voids a legal transaction that offends good morals, and specifically one where a party exploits another’s predicament, inexperience or weakness to obtain a conspicuously disproportionate advantage. A German contract can be void because the bargain was too one-sided. Not misrepresented, not coerced — just too unequal.