Competence Archives - Page 9 of 11

Everybody Talks About the Weather

Alle reden vom Wetter. Wir nicht. Everybody talks about the weather. We don’t. In 1966, the Deutsche Bundesbahn, the West German railway, advertised itself with this line. A 23-year-old secretary at the McCann agency in Frankfurt, Margot Müller, came up with it while serving coffee at a meeting. The railway presented itself as a way to travel that the weather could not stop.

Today the railway publishes its punctuality every month. A long-distance train counts as on time at a stop if it arrives no more than 5 minutes and 59 seconds late. By that measure, 62.5 percent of long-distance trains were on time in 2024, and 60.1 percent in 2025.

An Unreliable Recruit

Ein unsicherer Kantonist, an unreliable cantonist, is a person nobody can count on. Duden defines the phrase as a person who is fickle and unreliable. A Kantonist was a recruit in the Prussian canton system, which was fixed in 1733. Each regiment drew its soldiers from its own canton. The unreliable cantonist was the recruit who tried to escape being called up.

Two Famous Assurances

In spring 1986, Labor Minister Norbert Blüm pasted up a poster himself on the market square in Bonn. It read: Denn eins ist sicher – die Rente. Because one thing is certain: the pension. The short form Die Rente ist sicher became almost a proverb, and Blüm was much smiled at and criticized for it. On 1 July 1990, the day the West German mark came to East Germany, Chancellor Helmut Kohl said in a television address that the eastern states would schon bald wieder in blühende Landschaften be transformed, soon into flourishing landscapes again. In 2021, an analysis in t-online found the statutory pension surprisingly robust. It also wrote that with the poster, Blüm had secured himself a place in the collective memory of the republic.

Your Savings Are Safe

On Sunday, 5 October 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück stood before the cameras. Merkel said: Wir sagen den Sparerinnen und Sparern, dass ihre Einlagen sicher sind! We tell the savers that their deposits are safe. No decision of parliament stood behind the guarantee. An economics journal later noted that it was put into the world without a decision of parliament, as a political promise. It calmed the savers, as intended.

A Euro a Minute

German sports teams put a price on lateness. In 2024, Borussia Dortmund’s catalog of fines for the 2023–24 season spread on social media. Coming late to training, team routines or meetings cost 100 euros per minute. Coming late on match day cost 3,000 euros. Missing a club appointment cost 5,000 euros. The German women’s handball team at the 2025 home World Championship kept a smaller list. Whoever came late paid one euro, per minute.

Punctual Like the Bricklayers

Pünktlich once meant more than being on time. Duden still lists an old meaning, gewissenhaft, korrekt, conscientious and correct. According to Rolf-Bernhard Essig, until about 1500 the word meant precise to the point. The saying pünktlich wie die Maurer, punctual like the bricklayers, keeps something of both. Today it is also said of a person who drops his tools exactly when work time ends.

The Academic Quarter

German university timetables often add two letters after the hour. c. t., cum tempore, with time, means the class starts a quarter of an hour later. A lecture at 2 p.m. c. t. begins at 2:15. This is the akademisches Viertel, the academic quarter. s. t., sine tempore, without time, means the class starts at the exact hour. At some universities, such as Erlangen-Nürnberg, all classes begin c. t. by default.

Typically German

In September 2017, the pollster YouGov asked Germans which things they considered very typically German. Punctuality was rated very typically German by 57 percent, after bureaucracy at 65 percent, beer at 63 percent and the Oktoberfest at 62 percent. When people are asked about their own values, the picture changes. In a 2011 YouGov study of values, 60 percent of Germans named honesty as an important value. Reliability and loyalty were each named by 22 percent.

Sayings About Time

Fünf Minuten vor der Zeit ist des Soldaten Pünktlichkeit.
Five minutes before the time is the soldier’s punctuality. A common variant says des Deutschen, the German’s.

Wer nicht kommt zur rechten Zeit, der muss sehn, was übrig bleibt.
Whoever does not come at the right time must see what is left over. It is said at the table.

Pünktlichkeit ist die Höflichkeit der Könige.
Punctuality is the politeness of kings. The saying is French in origin, L’exactitude est la politesse des rois, and is attributed to King Louis XVIII. The French word is exactitude, exactness.

A House Sold on a Handshake

In Germany, a contract to sell a piece of land must be recorded by a notary. The Civil Code says so in § 311b. A sale agreed on a handshake, or in a letter signed by both sides, is void, however clearly both of them wanted it. The general rule is § 125: Ein Rechtsgeschäft, welches der durch Gesetz vorgeschriebenen Form ermangelt, ist nichtig. A legal transaction that lacks the form prescribed by law is void. The law offers one way back. The contract becomes valid after all once the transfer has been declared and entered in the land register.