The German delegation was not allowed to take part in the negotiations on the Treaty of Versailles. It could only submit written objections after the terms were presented. On 12 May 1919, the head of the government, Philipp Scheidemann, asked the National Assembly: Welche Hand müsste nicht verdorren, die sich und uns in solche Fesseln legte? What hand would not wither that put itself and us in such chains? On 28 June 1919, two German ministers signed under protest, after an ultimatum. Most Germans saw the treaty as an illegitimate and humiliating Diktat. Das Versailler Diktat became a political slogan. Revising the treaty was a declared goal of German foreign policy throughout the Weimar Republic. In 1932, Theodor Heuss wrote that the starting point of the National Socialist movement was not Munich, but Versailles.
Hard but Fair
Die Verhandlungen waren hart, aber fair. The negotiations were hard but fair. German negotiators often say this after a difficult round, sometimes on both sides of the table. The two words do not contradict each other. Hart describes the pressure. Fair describes whether the result can be accepted. After a wage agreement in the mineral water industry of North Rhine-Westphalia in May 2022, the food workers’ union explained its result to members in one sentence: Der gefundene Kompromiss ist fair, weil er die Positionen beider Seiten berücksichtigt. The compromise is fair because it takes the positions of both sides into account.
The Honest Broker
On 19 February 1878, Otto von Bismarck spoke in the Reichstag about the crisis in the Balkans. He described the part he wanted Germany to play in settling it. He did not want Germany to den Schiedsrichter spielen, to play the arbiter, and say So soll es sein, this is how it shall be, with the power of the German Reich behind it. He saw the role as more modest, and he took an example from ordinary life. It would be mehr die eines ehrlichen Maklers, der das Geschäft wirklich zu Stande bringen will, more that of an honest broker who really wants to bring the business about. Four months later, the great powers met in Berlin under his chairmanship.
The phrase is often quoted in a smoother form: Ich will nichts mehr als der ehrliche Makler zwischen uneinigen Klienten sein, der das Geschäft zustande bringt. I want nothing more than to be the honest broker between clients who disagree, who brings the business about. This form is usually placed at the Congress of Berlin, and it has no clear source. The speech as printed in 1878 uses the wording above.
The Mediation Committee
When the Bundestag and the Bundesrat disagree on a law, Article 77 of the Basic Law provides for a joint committee. The Vermittlungsausschuss, the mediation committee, has 32 members. Sixteen come from the Bundestag, and each of the sixteen states has one seat. The members from the states are not bound by instructions from their governments. The sessions are confidential. The Bundestag describes what happens once the committee is called: Es beginnt die Suche nach Kompromissen, um das Gesetz „zu retten“. The search for compromises begins, to “save” the law. The result is an Einigungsvorschlag, a proposal for agreement, and the chambers then decide on it. The committee is needed most when the two chambers have different majorities. It was called 102 times between 2002 and 2005, and three times between 2013 and 2017.
A Peace With a Secret Reservation
In 1795 Immanuel Kant published Zum ewigen Frieden, Toward Perpetual Peace, in Königsberg. The first article reads: Es soll kein Friedensschluß für einen solchen gelten, der mit dem geheimen Vorbehalt des Stoffs zu einem künftigen Kriege gemacht worden. No treaty of peace shall count as one if it was made with the secret reservation of material for a future war. Kant explained that such a treaty would be ein bloßer Waffenstillstand, Aufschub der Feindseligkeiten, nicht Friede. It would be a mere ceasefire, a postponement of hostilities, not peace. Peace means the end of all hostilities. For that reason, Kant wrote, adding the word perpetual to it is already a suspicious repetition.
Withdrawing the Condemnations
On Reformation Day 1999, the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church signed the Gemeinsame Erklärung zur Rechtfertigungslehre, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The ceremony took place in the Lutheran St. Anne’s Church in Augsburg. How a person is justified before God had been a central point of dispute in the Reformation. The direct history of the declaration began in Germany. A key step was a study, completed in 1986, that asked whether the old condemnations still divided the churches. The final text states a Konsens in Grundwahrheiten, a consensus in basic truths. Its aim was a differenzierter Konsens, a differentiated consensus, in which each side keeps its own tradition and language where these do not contradict each other. On that basis, the mutual condemnations of the 16th century zurückgenommen werden und heute nicht mehr gelten, are withdrawn and no longer apply today.
Wages Are Not the State’s Business
Article 9 of the Basic Law protects the right to form associations to improve working and economic conditions. From it follows the Tarifautonomie, under which unions and employers set wages free from state interference. A statutory minimum wage arrived only on 1 January 2015, at 8.50 euros an hour. Its adjustments were left to a commission in which unions and employers each have three voting members. In 2022 the Bundestag instead raised the minimum wage by law, to 12 euros from 1 October. When the plan was presented, the president of the employers’ federation BDA, Rainer Dulger, called it a grobe Verletzung der Tarifautonomie, a gross violation of bargaining autonomy. The federation complained that the increase was set without the commission that was actually responsible.
The Serious Will to Agree
Section 74 of the Works Constitution Act sets out how the employer and the works council work together. They should meet at least once a month. On disputed questions they must negotiate “mit dem ernsten Willen zur Einigung,” with the serious will to reach agreement. Both sides must also make proposals for settling their differences.
Without Alternative
On 18 January 2011, the jury of the Unwort des Jahres, the non-word of the year, chose alternativlos, without alternative, for 2010. Chancellor Angela Merkel and members of her government had used the word since 2009, for example for the bank rescue. The jury gave its reasons. The word suggests that a decision has no alternatives from the start, “und damit auch keine Notwendigkeit der Diskussion und Argumentation.” And therefore no need for discussion and argument. The linguist Horst Dieter Schlosser, who led the jury, called the word “das Basta der Merkel-Regierung.” It was the government’s way of saying basta, that is final.
The People Have Spoken
Winfried Kretschmann of the Greens became head of government in Baden-Württemberg in 2011, and he had opposed the Stuttgart 21 rail project. On 27 November 2011, the state’s voters decided in a referendum that it should go ahead. The next day Kretschmann said: Das Volk hat gesprochen, und das akzeptiere ich, auch wenn es nicht meinem Wunsch entspricht. (The people have spoken, and I accept that, even though it is not what I wanted.) In an open letter to the public, answering those who still demanded that the station not be built, he wrote: Die Bahn darf Stuttgart 21 bauen. (The railway may build Stuttgart 21.) In a democracy, he wrote, politics and he himself as head of government no longer had the legitimacy das Projekt Stuttgart 21 dem Grunde nach immer und immer wieder in Frage zu stellen, to question the project in principle again and again.