German law tests the reliability of a person. Under Section 35 of the Trade Regulation Act, the authorities must ban a trader from running a business when facts show that the trader is unreliable and the ban is needed to protect the public or employees. The Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Frankfurt explains the meaning. A person is unreliable who, judged by the overall picture of his conduct, offers no assurance that he will run the business properly in the future. Typical reasons are unpaid taxes and unpaid social insurance contributions. The ban can be lifted only when facts justify the assumption that the unreliability no longer exists. The Weapons Act uses the same word. A person convicted of certain crimes lacks the necessary reliability until ten years after the last conviction became final.
The Reliable Primary School
Lower Saxony named a school model after a promise. It is the Verlässliche Grundschule, the reliable primary school. A brochure of the state’s education ministry from 2002 describes one of these schools, in Hude, which began as a reliable primary school in 1999. It guarantees all children whose parents want it a reliable school day from 7:45 to 12:45. “Keine Schülerin, kein Schüler muss später kommen oder früher gehen, weil eine Lehrkraft erkrankt ist.” No pupil has to come later or leave earlier because a teacher is ill.
A Penalty for Each Day of Delay
A German construction contract can tie the builder to the completion date with a Vertragsstrafe, a contractual penalty. Under Section 339 of the Civil Code, the penalty is incurred as soon as the debtor is in default. In a case decided by the Federal Court of Justice in February 2024, the clause set 0.2 percent of the contract sum for every working day of delay, up to 5 percent in total. The court had held in 2003 that a penalty of 5 percent of the contract sum is just about permissible. In 2024 it struck down the clause for another reason. The sum on which the penalty was calculated was only provisional.
Rather Lose Money Than Trust
“Ich möchte lieber Geld verlieren als Vertrauen.” I would rather lose money than trust. The sentence is Robert Bosch’s, the founder of the Bosch company. A biography records that he repeated it emphatically in 1919. The magazine of the Hans Böckler Foundation called it perhaps his most famous sentence.
Too Often He Broke My Trust
On 6 November 2024, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that he would ask the Federal President to dismiss his finance minister, Christian Lindner. “Zu oft hat er mein Vertrauen gebrochen,” Scholz said. Too often he broke my trust. “Es gibt keine Vertrauensbasis für die weitere Zusammenarbeit.” There is no basis of trust for further cooperation.
Promises Kept, Trust Not Regained
The coalition agreement of 2013 between the CDU/CSU and the SPD contained 188 concrete measures and goals. In February 2018 the Bertelsmann Foundation published a study that analyzed them in detail. The government had carried out 80 percent of them, fully or in part. Yet only 13 percent of eligible voters believed that all, almost all or a large part of the promises had been kept. The largest group, 38 percent, believed that only a small part, or hardly any, had been kept.
The record was better than its reputation. The study called the difference a very painful credibility gap.
As Punctual as the Railway
Pünktlich wie die Eisenbahn, as punctual as the railway, is an old German phrase of praise. Today it is mostly said with irony. In 2025 only 60.1 percent of Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance trains arrived on time, according to figures first reported by Bild am Sonntag. In 2015 the share had been 74.4 percent. By the railway’s own definition, a train is late from six minutes of delay. For 2026, the head of Deutsche Bahn, Evelyn Palla, hoped to reach at least 60 percent.
The irony only works because the old standard is still expected.
Secondary Virtues
In July 1982, during the dispute over the stationing of new NATO missiles, the Social Democrat Oskar Lafontaine answered his own party’s chancellor, Helmut Schmidt. He told the magazine Stern that Schmidt kept speaking of “Pflichtgefühl, Berechenbarkeit, Machbarkeit, Standhaftigkeit,” a sense of duty, predictability, feasibility and steadfastness. Then he went on: “Das sind Sekundärtugenden. Ganz präzis gesagt: Damit kann man auch ein KZ betreiben.” These are secondary virtues. To put it precisely, you can also run a concentration camp with them. German uses the word Sekundärtugend for traits such as diligence, punctuality and reliability. They are useful in daily life. Pursued for their own sake, they have no moral value.
Reliability earns trust in Germany, but Germans also ask what it is used for.
Withdrawn for Later Fraud
The physicist Jan Hendrik Schön received his doctorate from the University of Konstanz in early 1998. In 2002 a commission of Bell Laboratories in the United States found that he had falsified measurement data. The University of Konstanz then withdrew his doctorate, although the fraud came after it. The state’s university law allows this when the holder’s later conduct shows that he is unworthy of the degree. Schön fought the decision for years. The Federal Administrative Court finally dismissed his case on 31 July 2013.
The Member of Parliament Without a Degree
Petra Hinz had been a Social Democratic member of the Bundestag since 2005. In July 2016 it became known that she had neither the Abitur nor a law degree, and so had passed no state law exams. She announced her resignation on 20 July 2016 and left the Bundestag at the end of August. The prosecutors in Essen found no initial suspicion of a crime and opened no investigation.
Prosecutors saw no crime in the false claims. They still ended her career in parliament within weeks.