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.)
Love the Old, Live for the New
In Theodor Fontane’s last novel, Der Stechlin (1899), Melusine von Barby says to Pastor Lorenzen: Alles Alte, soweit es Anspruch darauf hat, sollen wir lieben, aber für das Neue sollen wir recht eigentlich leben. (Everything old, as far as it has a claim to it, we should love. But for the new we should truly live.) The old earns love only soweit es Anspruch darauf hat, as far as it has a claim to it.
Authority Must Be Earned
In Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method, 1960), the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer argued against the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment had given Vorurteil, prejudgment, a negative meaning. Gadamer gave it a positive role in all understanding. The Enlightenment made reason the last source of authority. Gadamer argued that tradition carries authority. For Gadamer, authority cannot be handed to anyone. It must be earned, because others recognize that its judgment and insight are superior.
Best If Not Much Changes
In early 2018, the Allensbach Institute asked people in the state of Hesse whether they agreed with this statement: Alles in allem geht es Hessen doch gut. Es wäre daher das Beste, wenn sich nicht viel ändern würde. (All in all, Hesse is doing well. So it would be best if not much changed.) Fifty-seven percent agreed. Across Germany, the share of people who said they believed in progress fell from 56 percent in 1967 to 32 percent in April 2019.
The Vocabulary of the Proven
Bewährt — proven, tried and tested. It is praise. The usual pairs are bewährte Methode, bewährte Praxis, bewährte Technik, a proven method, practice or technique.
Altbewährt — proven for a long time.
Neumodisch — newfangled. The word for something new that has not yet earned its place.
Never change a running system — said in English, in German offices and IT departments.
Was der Bauer nicht kennt, frisst er nicht — what the farmer does not know, he will not eat.
Prüft aber alles und das Gute behaltet — but test everything and keep the good. It comes from Luther’s translation of Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians.
Das haben wir schon immer so gemacht — we have always done it this way. Germans quote this mostly to mock it, as the typical objection to anything new.
Probieren geht über Studieren — trying beats studying. It is the proverb on the other side.
No Experiments
In the 1957 Bundestag election, the CDU campaigned with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer under the slogan Keine Experimente!, no experiments. The message was that a change of government would put at risk what West Germany had built since the war. On 15 September 1957, CDU and CSU won 50.2 percent of the vote and 269 of 497 seats. It is the only time in a Bundestag election that one party group has won an absolute majority of both votes and seats. The slogan was not new. The Center Party had already used it in 1932.
The Spelling Reform
In 1996, the German-speaking countries agreed to reform German spelling, with the new rules in schools from 1 August 1998 at the latest. At the Frankfurt Book Fair that year, hundreds of writers and scholars signed the Frankfurter Erklärung, which called for the reform to be stopped. On 14 July 1998, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that introducing the new rules in schools by ministerial decree was lawful. Two months later, on 27 September 1998, the voters of Schleswig-Holstein decided in a referendum to bring back the traditional spelling in their schools. The state parliament repealed that law a year later. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung tried the new rules for a year and went back to the old spelling in 2000. In 1997, a poll by the Allensbach Institute found 10 percent of Germans for the reform and 70 percent against it.
The reform was settled only after a new body, the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung, revised it. Its changes took effect on 1 August 2006. The FAZ adopted a house style based largely on these revised rules in 2007. In 2008, Allensbach still found 55 percent against the reform and 9 percent for it.