Gut Ding will Weile haben — a good thing wants time.
Eile mit Weile — hurry with leisure, a German rendering of festina lente.
Übers Knie brechen — to break something over the knee. The German phrase for forcing a hasty resolution, and it names what happens to the thing.
Erst mal eine Nacht drüber schlafen — sleep a night over it first. Said in German meetings, and acted on.
Deeskalation. De-escalation is taught as a named technique in German policing, nursing, teaching and public service, with its own training courses and certificates. Slowing a situation down is treated as a professional skill with a curriculum.
Das Vier-Augen-Gespräch. The four-eyes conversation. German conflict handling begins with separate one-to-one discussions rather than with a meeting of the parties. Several of them, in sequence, before anyone is brought together — which takes time by design.
Bedenkzeit. Time to think it over. A German negotiating and mediating convention: a party may ask for it, and asking is not read as weakness or delay. The request is granted as a matter of course, and often proposed by the mediator.
Der Instanzenzug. The German court hierarchy provides successive levels of appeal, each with its own full examination. A dispute is expected to take years if it needs to, and the structure is built on the assumption that a first answer may not be the right one.
Fristen. German procedure runs on prescribed periods — to respond, to object, to appeal — and they are counted in weeks. The clock is generous and it is strict. Nobody is asked to reply immediately, and nobody is permitted to reply late.
Das selbständige Beweisverfahren. German law allows a party to have evidence formally secured and examined by a court-appointed expert before any lawsuit is filed, particularly in construction disputes. The investigation can precede the conflict, and frequently ends it.
Der Sachverständige. German disputes over technical matters routinely go to a court-appointed expert, who produces a written report on a timetable measured in months. The court waits. The report arrives when it is finished.
Das Beweisverfahren. German courts take evidence in a structured process — documents, witnesses, court-appointed experts — and a case may be adjourned repeatedly while it runs. Speed is not a value the procedure optimises for.
Sachverhaltsaufklärung. Clarification of the facts. German procedural law obliges a court to establish what actually happened before applying any rule to it, and the phase has its own name and its own stage in the judgment. The facts are settled first, as separate work.