German politics has a word for an agreement not to reopen a school system: Schulfrieden, school peace. In December 2008, the SPD, the Greens, the CDU and the FDP in Bremen agreed to take no initiatives for ten years that would substantially change the school structure they had just reformed. The Bremen SPD chair argued in March 2018: Es war und ist richtig, den Streit über Schulstrukturen zu beenden. (It was and is right to end the dispute over school structures.) In 2018, the leaders of the SPD, CDU, Greens and Left agreed to continue the agreement. The structure was not to be touched in den kommenden zehn Jahren bis 2028, in the coming ten years, until 2028. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the red-green government and the CDU opposition agreed on a school peace in 2011 that was meant to hold until 2023. In August 2026, the CDU group in Bremen, now in opposition, called for a new agreement after 2028: Nicht der Konsens ist gescheitert – der Senat ist bislang an seinem Vollzug gescheitert. (The consensus has not failed. So far, the city government has failed to carry it out.)
The Airport Mediation
Frankfurt’s western runway opened in 1984 after years of protest, some of it violent. When the airport planned its next runway, the state government of Hesse took a different route. In 1998, at its suggestion, a mediation group was formed with environmental groups and the towns under the flight path, to discuss the expansion with an open outcome. In January 2000, the group supported a new landing runway, on one main condition: ein striktes Nachtflugverbot zwischen 23:00 und 5:00 Uhr, a strict ban on night flights between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. The airport accepted the ban when it applied for the runway. The state’s approval of 2007 still allowed seventeen night flights. In October 2011, days before the new runway opened, the state’s highest administrative court imposed the night ban.
Legitimacy Through Procedure
In 1969, the sociologist Niklas Luhmann published Legitimation durch Verfahren, legitimacy through procedure. Luhmann argued that people do not accept decisions by the state because of ideas about what is right. They accept them because they believe in the procedure that produced them, while the outcome is still open, and because they took part in that procedure.
All Those Affected
In Faktizität und Geltung (Between Facts and Norms, 1992), the philosopher Jürgen Habermas defined which rules are valid: Gültig sind genau die Handlungsnormen, denen alle möglicherweise Betroffenen als Teilnehmer an rationalen Diskursen zustimmen könnten. (Valid are exactly those norms of action to which all those possibly affected could agree as participants in rational discourse.)
The Coal Commission
In June 2018, the federal government set up a commission on growth, structural change and employment. Germans called it the Kohlekommission, the coal commission. Its job was to work out how Germany would end coal power. Its 28 voting members included unions, industry associations, environmental groups, scientists and people from the mining regions, among them the mayor of Spremberg in Lusatia. On 26 January 2019, it presented its report. The last coal plant was to close in 2038, and the regions were to receive 40 billion euros in aid over twenty years. Twenty-seven of the 28 members voted for it. The one vote against came from a representative of Lusatian residents affected by open-cast mining, because the report did not protect the village of Proschim from being cleared. Parliament turned the plan into law in 2020.
Against the Will of the Workforce
On 20 December 2024, after more than seventy hours of talks, Volkswagen and the IG Metall union reached an agreement. ZDF called it the longest negotiating marathon in the company’s history. More than 35,000 jobs were to go by 2030, but in a socially acceptable way, without compulsory redundancies. Employees gave up pay increases. The head of the works council, Daniela Cavallo, listed what the workforce had gained, and ended with this: nicht zuletzt die Gewissheit für den Vorstand, dass bei Volkswagen Veränderungen gegen den Willen der Belegschaft zum Scheitern verurteilt sind. (Not least, the certainty for the board that at Volkswagen, changes against the will of the workforce are doomed to fail.)
Over People’s Heads
Betroffene zu Beteiligten machen — make those affected into participants. It is a familiar rule of German change management. A podcast of the Bundeswehr’s staff college calls it a very frequently quoted sentence.
Jemanden ins Boot holen — to bring someone into the boat.
Mitspracherecht — the right to have a say.
Einen runden Tisch einberufen — to call a round table, so that all sides of a conflict sit down together.
Über die Köpfe hinweg entscheiden — to decide over people’s heads.
Jemanden vor vollendete Tatsachen stellen — to present someone with completed facts. Duden explains it as confronting someone with a situation created on one’s own authority.
Basta-Politik — politics by basta, that’s final. It is never praise.
Wutbürger — the enraged citizen. The Society for the German Language chose it as word of the year 2010, during the protests against the Stuttgart 21 rail project. It explained that the word expressed people’s outrage dass politische Entscheidungen über ihren Kopf hinweg getroffen werden, that political decisions are made over their heads.
Words for a settlement both can live with
Eine Lösung, mit der beide leben können — a solution both can live with. The standard German formulation, and the verb is leben, to live.
Sich zusammenraufen — to scuffle one’s way together. A rough process with a settled ending.
Auf einen gemeinsamen Nenner kommen — to arrive at a common denominator.
Unter einen Hut bringen — to bring under one hat, said of reconciling competing interests.
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.
Federalism by agreement
German federalism requires agreement between the federal government and the states across broad areas of legislation, through a second chamber composed of state governments. The constitution obliges the levels to reach terms. A majority is frequently not enough.