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 Chancellor Uses His Directive Power
In October 2022, the Greens and the FDP in Olaf Scholz’s government disagreed on how long Germany’s last three nuclear plants should run. On 17 October, Scholz settled it in a letter. He invoked his Richtlinienkompetenz, the chancellor’s power to set the guidelines of policy, under § 1 of the federal government’s rules of procedure. He instructed the ministers Habeck, Lemke and Lindner to draft the laws needed to keep Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland running until 15 April 2023 at the latest. A journalist said on Swiss radio that day: Es ist tatsächlich ungewöhnlich, in Deutschland als Kanzler die Richtlinienkompetenz zu ziehen. It is indeed unusual in Germany for a chancellor to use the directive power.
The Duty to Keep the Peace
German labor law speaks of peace here. While a collective wage agreement is in force, neither side may take industrial action, strikes or lockouts, over the matters it settles. This is the Friedenspflicht, the duty to keep the peace. It does not have to be written into the agreement, because it is considered inherent in every collective agreement. Strikes over matters the agreement does not cover remain allowed. Inside a company, the law goes further. Industrial action between employer and works council is not allowed at all, and both must avoid anything that disturbs den Frieden des Betriebs, the peace of the workplace.
School Peace
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 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.
The Vocabulary of Rushing
Mit heißer Nadel gestrickt — knitted with a hot needle. It is said of a law or a program that was made in a hurry. A newspaper wrote in 2007: Offenbar ist das Programm zum raschen Stellenabbau mit heißer Nadel genäht worden. (Evidently the program for fast job cuts was sewn with a hot needle.)
Hauruckverfahren — the heave-ho method. DWDS defines it as hasty, reckless action. A CDU politician said in 2006: Ein Ding, das für Jahrzehnte gelten soll, muss nicht im Hauruckverfahren entschieden werden. (A thing that is meant to last for decades does not have to be decided by the heave-ho method.)
Blinder Aktionismus — blind actionism. Duden defines Aktionismus as an exaggerated urge to be active, and notes that the word is often critical.
Generalstabsmäßig — like a general staff. Duden defines it as with military care and precision. Duden gives it no critical label. Its example is a bank robbery planned like a general staff operation.
Erst wägen, dann wagen — first weigh, then venture. It is the motto on a cast-iron wall relief of Helmuth von Moltke in uniform, made in Ilsenburg in 1891.
Gut geplant ist halb gewonnen — well planned is half won.
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.