Frederick II of Prussia issued a series of orders to make his subjects grow potatoes. Fifteen are known, and the first dates from 1746. The circular to Silesia of 24 March 1756 did not simply command. It told officials to make landowners and peasants understand the benefit of the new crop. The popular stories that follow are legend, not documented fact. In one, the peasants cooked the seeds or the plants instead of the tubers and then refused to grow them. In another, the king had potatoes grown under guard, as if they were valuable. When peasants stole the seed potatoes at night, the guards had orders to look away.
The Phantom Goal and the Goal-Line Camera
On 18 October 2013, in a Bundesliga match between Hoffenheim and Leverkusen, Stefan Kießling headed the ball into the side netting. It went through a hole in the net, and the referee gave a goal. The DFB sports court rejected Hoffenheim’s protest, because the referee’s decision on the facts is final. In spring 2014, the Bundesliga clubs voted on goal-line technology, and the proposal clearly failed. Cologne’s manager said the costs were too high to carry. That summer, the system was used in all twelve stadiums of the World Cup in Brazil. In December 2014, the clubs voted for it with a two-thirds majority. It has been used in the Bundesliga since the 2015–16 season.
Back to Nine Years of High School
From 2003, most German states cut the Gymnasium, the academic high school, from nine years to eight. The argument was that German graduates were older than graduates elsewhere. Criticism followed. Students in the shorter course had an average of 34 class hours a week and hardly any free time. In 2014, Lower Saxony became the first state to abandon the eight-year model completely. Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia decided in 2017 to return to nine years, and Schleswig-Holstein followed from 2019. In Baden-Württemberg, a citizens’ forum voted by a large majority to return, and the change began in 2025. In 2025, most Bavarian Gymnasien held no final exams at all, because the first nine-year class had not yet reached its last year.
Recognized Rules of Technology
German construction contracts measure work against the allgemein anerkannte Regeln der Technik, the generally recognized rules of technology. Work counts as free of defects only if it has the agreed quality and follows these rules. A rule counts as recognized only when the great majority of technical experts hold it. It must also have proven itself in practice, not only in science: sich auch praktisch bewährt. For this reason, the standard takes up new methods late. A builder who departs from it carries the risk, because a departure is generally treated as a defect. A new building product with no recognized rule behind it needs a general approval from the German Institute for Building Technology before it may be used.
In November 2024, the federal cabinet approved a draft law for a Gebäudetyp E, a building type for simple and experimental building. Under the draft, in contracts between expert businesses, a departure from the recognized rules would no longer count as a defect under three conditions. It must be disclosed to the client before the work starts. The client must not object at once. And the building must remain safe and fit for use over time. A new government draft went to the Bundestag on 8 June 2026.
A New Drug Must Prove It Is Better
Since 1 January 2011, every drug with a new active substance in Germany must prove its Zusatznutzen, its added benefit, when it comes on the market. The manufacturer submits a dossier. The Federal Joint Committee, the highest self-governing body of German health care, then decides whether the drug is better than the established treatment it chose for comparison. If no added benefit is shown, statutory health insurance pays a price based on comparable drugs that already exist. New treatment methods face a similar test. In outpatient care, the Social Code allows them to be billed to statutory insurance only after the committee has recognized their benefit, auch im Vergleich zu bereits zu Lasten der Krankenkassen erbrachte Methoden, also in comparison with the methods the insurers already pay for.
Every Bill Must Name Its Problem
Bills from the German federal government open with a cover sheet in a fixed order. A bill from September 2026 is an example. Section A is Problem und Ziel, problem and goal. Section B is the solution and its benefit. Section C lists the alternatives. The sections that follow set out what the change will cost the budget, citizens and business. Since 2011, an independent council, the Nationaler Normenkontrollrat, has checked these compliance costs in every federal draft law. Since 2015, the government has followed a rule of one in, one out. A new burden on business must in principle be balanced by an equal relief somewhere else.
You Know What You Have
Until 1973, the name on a pack of Persil, Henkel’s laundry detergent, normally came with a year. In 1973, Henkel dropped the year from the pack. The new advertisements carried a new slogan instead: Persil. Da weiß man, was man hat. (Persil. You know what you have.) Henkel’s own history says that this line stayed in consumers’ memory for good.
It Runs and Runs and Runs
The Volkswagen Beetle was sold with the slogan Der VW läuft und läuft und läuft, the VW runs and runs and runs. It was written by the copywriter Werner Butter. After 1967, the outside of the car hardly changed. On 17 February 1972, the Beetle overtook the Ford Model T as the most-built car in the world. The last Beetle sedan made in Europe left the plant in Emden on 19 January 1978. Production ended for good in Mexico on 30 July 2003, after 21,529,464 cars.
The Bucket Testament
In 1975, the Protestant Church in Germany presented a revised New Testament in modern German. The reactions were extremely critical. People called it the Eimertestament, the bucket testament, because Luther’s Scheffel, the bushel under which no one hides a light, had become an Eimer, a bucket. The church reworked it within a year, and the 1984 revision went back partly to Luther’s language. The revision for the Reformation anniversary in 2017 moved closer to Luther again. Psalm 23 and the Lord’s Prayer kept their familiar wording. The church said the text should stay easy to read, to hear and to learn by heart.
How a New Truth Wins
In his scientific autobiography of 1948, the physicist Max Planck described how new ideas win in science: Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist. (A new scientific truth does not usually win by convincing its opponents and making them say they have learned. It wins because its opponents gradually die out, and the next generation grows up familiar with the truth from the start.)