In the 2014/15 season, SC Freiburg finished 17th and was relegated from the Bundesliga. The club kept its coach, Christian Streich. One season later, Freiburg came back up as second-division champions. The Bundesliga’s own website later wrote: Dieses Vertrauen machte sich rückblickend mehr als bezahlbar. In hindsight, this trust more than paid off. Streich stayed head coach for twelve years. When he announced his departure in 2024, he spoke of 29 years at the club.
Buying Cheap Twice
Wer billig kauft, kauft zweimal. — Whoever buys cheap buys twice.
Qualität hat ihren Preis. — Quality has its price.
Qualität setzt sich durch. — Quality prevails.
Not Before the Whole Ring
Richard Wagner saw his cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen as a single whole. When its first part, Das Rheingold, was ready, the cycle was not. Wagner wanted to wait until it was complete and stage it himself. King Ludwig II of Bavaria did not want to wait. He scheduled the performance at the Royal Court and National Theater in Munich, and Das Rheingold was first performed on September 22, 1869. Wagner stayed away from the premiere.
The Vaccination Committee Answers a Minister-President
Germany’s Standing Committee on Vaccination, the STIKO, was set up in 1972. It is a volunteer group of experts. In July 2021 Bavaria’s Minister-President Markus Söder pushed for a faster general COVID-19 vaccination recommendation for children from 12. He contrasted the volunteer committee with the “professionals” of the European Medicines Agency. The STIKO answered publicly that the statements of Söder and other politicians were “ungewöhnlich und müssen korrigiert werden”, unusual and in need of correction. It works, it said, independently of the opinions and wishes of politicians and the pharmaceutical industry. On 16 August 2021 the committee recommended vaccination for everyone from 12. It named a careful evaluation of new scientific data as the reason.
The Constructive Vote of No Confidence
In the Weimar Republic, extreme forces on the left and the right could bring down a government together without agreeing on a successor. The authors of the Basic Law wanted to avoid exactly this error. Under Article 67, the Bundestag can express its lack of confidence in the chancellor only by electing a successor with the majority of its members. Forty-eight hours must pass between the motion and the vote. The procedure has been used twice. In April 1972 it failed against Willy Brandt. In October 1982 it succeeded, and Helmut Kohl replaced Helmut Schmidt.
Words for a Fix That Will Not Last
die Flickschusterei — cobbler’s patching. DWDS: an improper, improvised repair, and also an attempt to improve a bad situation that does not bring the hoped-for result. Die Zeit wrote in 2008 of making a few new shoes for once, statt Flickschusterei, instead of patching.
das Stückwerk — piecework, something incomplete. Seine Bemühungen blieben nur Stückwerk, his efforts remained only piecework.
mit heißer Nadel genäht — sewn with a hot needle, done in a hurry and therefore without care.
Wer billig kauft, kauft zweimal. — Whoever buys cheap buys twice.
einen Mangel abstellen — to stop a defect, to remove it.
A Matter for Professionals
On 10 March 2019 the FDP leader Christian Lindner commented on the school strikes for the climate. Children and young people, he said, could not be expected to see all the global connections, what is technically sensible and what is economically feasible. Das ist eine Sache für Profis. (That is a matter for professionals.) The organizers of Fridays for Future replied: Profis beim Thema Klimaschutz sind Wissenschaftler*innen. (The professionals on climate protection are scientists.) In March 2019, according to the initiative, more than 23,000 scientists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland signed a statement that supported the students. Volker Quaschning, a Berlin professor of renewable energy systems, said: Wir sind die Profis und sagen: Die junge Generation hat Recht. (We are the professionals, and we say: the young generation is right.)
Neither side questioned that the experts should decide. They argued only about who the experts were.
The Stress Test for Stuttgart 21
On 30 November 2010 the arbitrator Heiner Geißler announced his ruling on Stuttgart 21, the planned underground main station. One of its conditions was a Stresstest. Deutsche Bahn had to prove that the new station could handle a timetable with 30 percent more capacity in the peak hour, with good operating quality. The railway ran the test, and the Swiss firm SMA und Partner audited it. On 29 July 2011 the results were presented and discussed in public, again with Geißler as moderator. The auditors found that the required 49 arrivals in the busiest hour could be handled. Opponents argued that the railway had not kept to its own rules. One group of critics said that the station could handle only 32 to 38 trains in the peak hour.
The Analysis of Possible Failures
In the car and aerospace industries, and often elsewhere, a new product or process goes through an FMEA, a Fehlermöglichkeits- und Einflussanalyse, an analysis of possible failures and their effects. A team from different departments lists what could fail, where and how. For each possible failure it describes the consequences and identifies the causes. The aim is to avoid failures from the start rather than to find and correct them later. A general German standard for the method appeared in 1980 as DIN 25448. In 1996 the German Association of the Automotive Industry, the VDA, published an improved version. Since 2019 the car industry has used a common handbook of the VDA and its American counterpart, the AIAG.
Parliament’s Office for Consequences
Since 1990 the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag, the TAB, has advised parliament on scientific and technical change. The German word for its work is Technikfolgenabschätzung, the assessment of the consequences of technology. A committee of the Bundestag decides what the office studies. One of its reports examined what would happen in a large, long-lasting power blackout. It was presented to the Bundestag on 27 April 2011. The report found that all critical infrastructure would be affected and that a collapse of society as a whole could hardly be prevented. The consequences, it said, would equal a national catastrophe.