Gewährleistung. German law gives a buyer a statutory two-year warranty against defects present at delivery, independent of any manufacturer guarantee, and for the first twelve months the defect is presumed to have existed at handover. The seller must prove otherwise.
The New Objectivity
In June 1925 Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, opened an exhibition called Neue Sachlichkeit: Deutsche Malerei seit dem Expressionismus. The name stuck to an entire era.
Hartlaub described the artists as those who had retained or regained their fidelity to positive, tangible reality. Otto Dix put it more bluntly: they wanted to see things quite naked, clearly, almost without art.
It was a reaction against Expressionism — against the mystical, the subjective, the utopian. A culture that names an art movement after objectivity has a strong relationship with the idea.
The work breakdown
Der Projektstrukturplan. The work breakdown structure. A German project is decomposed into work packages, each with an owner, a deliverable, a duration and a number. The plan is not a list of tasks. It is a structure, and the numbering shows how each piece hangs off the whole.
Celebration evening
Celebration-evening. The German word for the end of the working day, and there is no English equivalent because English has no word for the thing.
Ich mache Feierabend — I am making Feierabend — is a complete sentence and a complete explanation. The day’s work is over, and what follows is not called leisure or free time. It is called a celebration.
Protected by method
German and European law protects certain products by reference to how they are made — the Reinheitsgebot for beer, protected designations for food, process patents in chemistry. The method is part of what the thing is.
Good faith
Treu und Glauben. Section 242 of the German Civil Code requires performance according to good faith, with regard to common usage. One sentence, and it is among the most heavily used provisions in German law.
Courts apply it to strike down conduct that is formally within a contract but unacceptable in substance. The agreement being signed does not settle whether it is enforceable.
The inspection associations
Der TÜV. The German technical inspection associations trace back to the steam boiler inspection societies of the nineteenth century, formed after boiler explosions. Today they test vehicles, lifts, pressure vessels, playgrounds and medical devices. An independent body decides whether a thing may continue to be used.
Keeping to the matter
Sache is the matter, the thing itself. Sachlich means pertaining to the matter and nothing else.
English has no clean equivalent. Objectivity suggests neutrality of the observer. Matter-of-fact is a description of manner. Sachlich is neither — it names a discipline: keeping to the substance and out of everything around it.
A German asking you to be sachlich is not asking you to be calm. They are asking you to talk about the problem.
Saving face
Gesichtswahrung. Face-saving. German conflict resolution attends to it explicitly, and the word is used openly in describing how a settlement was constructed. A resolution that humiliates one party is understood to be unstable, and constructing the exit is part of the work.
The bill of materials
Die Stückliste. The bill of materials. A German parts list is structured, levelled and versioned — every component, every sub-assembly, every quantity, with its own part number. The product exists as a document before it exists as a thing.