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.
Germany Talks
Before the federal election of 2017, the editors of Zeit Online created Deutschland spricht, Germany Talks. Participants answer political questions with yes or no. A program then pairs people who live close to each other and whose answers are as different as possible. The pairs meet in person to argue. On a Sunday in June 2017, 1,200 people met in pairs to argue. In September 2018 there were 8,000. The jury of the Grimme Online Award said the project fostered respect between political opponents and served democracy “im besten Sinne,” in the best sense.
Right, but Without a Mechanism
On 6 January 1912, Alfred Wegener presented his first ideas about continental drift in public. His main work, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, appeared in 1915. The criticism from the profession was mostly devastating. Critics objected again and again that he could not explain what caused the drift. In 1924 Harold Jeffreys showed that the forces Wegener proposed were far too weak. Research on the ocean floor in the 1950s and 1960s led to plate tectonics, which has been generally accepted since the 1970s.
Wegener was right about the continents. He could not show how they moved, and for decades that was what counted.
The Principle of Sufficient Reason
In 1714 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote the Monadology, in French. Section 32 states the principle of sufficient reason. No fact can be true or existing without a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise. In German it became der Satz vom zureichenden Grund. German philosophy kept returning to it. Arthur Schopenhauer wrote his doctoral thesis on it in 1813, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde. Martin Heidegger wrote Der Satz vom Grund.
Hard on the Matter
The president of the Bundestag can call a speaker back to the subject. This is the Sachruf. A speaker called back to the subject three times in one speech can lose the floor. The president can also call a member to order by name when the member violates the order or the dignity of the house. This is the Ordnungsruf. Three calls to order within three sitting weeks bring a fine of 2,000 euros, and 4,000 euros in a repeat case. In November 2025 the Bundestag rejected objections by AfD members to calls to order they had received. Vice President Andrea Lindholz explained the line. Members may “hart in der Sache diskutieren,” argue hard on the substance. They may not give up decency and a dignified manner toward one another.
Criticism of the Matter, Not the Person
German constitutional law protects sharp criticism. It does not protect Schmähkritik, abusive criticism. The Federal Constitutional Court defines this narrowly. A statement is abusive criticism only when “nicht mehr die Auseinandersetzung in der Sache, sondern die Diffamierung der Person im Vordergrund steht.” The debate about the matter is no longer in the foreground, and the defamation of the person is. Even exaggerated and abusive criticism is not Schmähkritik for that reason alone. In August 2020 the court overturned the conviction of a man in preventive detention. During a dispute over late pocket money, he had called a social worker at the prison a Trulla, a disparaging word for a woman.
A Poem Called Abusive Criticism
On 31 March 2016, the satirist Jan Böhmermann read a poem about the Turkish president on his ZDFneo show Neo Magazin Royale. He introduced it as an example of what is not allowed in Germany. “Ich habe ein Gedicht, das heißt ‚Schmähkritik’.” I have a poem, and it is called abusive criticism. Prosecutors in Mainz closed the criminal investigation in October 2016. In the civil case, the courts in Hamburg banned the defamatory lines. On appeal, 18 of the 24 lines stayed banned. In January 2022 the Federal Constitutional Court declined to hear Böhmermann’s complaint. Long before that, in June 2017, the Bundestag had voted unanimously to abolish Section 103 of the Criminal Code. It was the offense of insulting the organs and representatives of foreign states.
Vanity, the Enemy of the Matter
In his 1919 lecture Politik als Beruf, Politics as a Vocation, Max Weber named three qualities a politician needs. “Leidenschaft – Verantwortungsgefühl – Augenmaß.” Passion, a sense of responsibility and a sense of proportion. Then he named the danger. It is ordinary vanity, “die Todfeindin aller sachlichen Hingabe und aller Distanz,” the deadly enemy of all devotion to the matter and of all distance. Vanity tempts the politician to become an actor and to ask only about the impression he makes. In politics, Weber wrote, there are in the end only two kinds of deadly sin. One is Unsachlichkeit, losing sight of the matter. The other, often though not always the same, is irresponsibility.
Lawyers Must Keep to the Matter
Section 43a of the Federal Lawyers’ Act says that a lawyer may not behave unsachlich, without regard to the matter, in practicing the profession. The law names two examples in particular. One is the deliberate spreading of untruths. The other is disparaging remarks for which the other parties or the course of the proceedings gave no cause.
The rule does not forbid sharp argument. It forbids attacks that the case itself does not justify.
Give Reasons!
Begründen Sie! Give reasons. Widerlegen Sie! Disprove it. Gibt es? Is there such a thing? Gilt das immer? Is that always true? The education ministers of the German states list these instructions as typical tasks in their national standards for the Abitur in mathematics, adopted on 18 October 2012. The standards make mathematical argument one of the core competences. The range runs from simple plausibility arguments to formal proofs. At the middle level, pupils must follow, explain or develop manageable arguments of several steps.