The sleeping pill Contergan was sold in Germany from 1 October 1957 to 27 November 1961. Under the drug law of the time, a manufacturer only had to register a new medicine. In 1961 the Hamburg doctor Widukind Lenz and others linked Contergan to severe malformations in newborn children. Other sources speak of about 4,000 affected children in Germany. After the scandal, Germany rewrote its drug law. The new law came into force at the start of 1978. Since then a medicine may be approved only after proof of its quality, its efficacy and its safety. The manufacturer, Grünenthal, apologized only in August 2012, at the unveiling of a memorial in its home town of Stolberg. Its managing director Harald Stock asked forgiveness that for 50 years the company had not found its way to the victims von Mensch zu Mensch, from person to person. Stattdessen haben wir geschwiegen. (Instead, we kept silent.) Victims’ associations criticized that the apology spoke only about the company’s lack of communication.
The Wheel That Never Came Back
At the end of 1991 the board of the Deutsche Bundesbahn decided to test rubber-sprung wheels under seven dining cars of the ICE high-speed train. Passengers had complained about rattling dishes and wandernde Gläser, wandering glasses. In October 1992 the board was asked to introduce the new wheels across the whole ICE fleet. On 3 June 1998, near Eschede on the line from Hanover to Hamburg, the tire of one of these wheels broke at about 200 kilometers per hour. Metal fatigue set off a chain of events, and 101 people died. Three days later the railway took all ICE 1 trains out of service and ran them again only after ultrasound checks of every wheel. The Federal Railway Authority ordered all of about 2,880 rubber-sprung wheel sets replaced. Two railway officials and an engineer of the tire manufacturer were charged with not testing the wheels enough. German Wikipedia notes that Deutsche Bahn has not reintroduced the rubber-sprung wheels, trotz ihrer technischen Vorteile, despite their technical advantages.
A Machine to Check a Calculation
Wendelstein 7-X in Greifswald is a fusion experiment of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. Its design rests on an optimization concept calculated in advance. The largely worked-out application for EU support was submitted in August 1990. Construction of the new institute building began in 1997. The machine produced its first plasma on 10 December 2015. Because of the long construction phase, the total cost of the Greifswald site was more than double the original estimate. One experimental phase in 2018 had a clearly stated aim: die Richtigkeit der berechneten Optimierung experimentell zu überprüfen, to check by experiment that the calculated optimization was correct.
The Workshop Owner and the Young Physicist
Carl Zeiss trained for four years as an apprentice mechanic. In his time, microscopes were made by Pröbeln, by trial and error. Zeiss wanted to build microscope optics from calculations instead. A first collaboration with a scientist produced no result. On 3 July 1866 the 50-year-old Zeiss began to work with Ernst Abbe, a 26-year-old lecturer in mathematical physics at the University of Jena. Abbe’s task was to put the workshop’s microscope production on a secure scientific foundation. The first microscope built from his calculations performed worse than the old ones. The work was finally completed in 1872. After that, no competing product surpassed the quality of their microscopes.
Approved Before It Is Built
In Germany a new building product cannot simply be used. If there is no technical rule for it, it needs a general approval from the German Institute for Building Technology, usually for five years. For a single building, the state’s highest building authority can approve its use in the individual case. Germany’s first 3D-printed residential house, in Beckum in North Rhine-Westphalia, went through this process. Construction began in September 2020. The state ministry approved the project through individual-case decisions. Above all, it needed values for calculating the stability of the printed walls. For this, the Technical University of Munich carried out numerous material tests. The two-story house was presented on 26 July 2021.
Measuring Before Flying
From 1874 Otto Lilienthal and his brother Gustav made systematic measurements of the lift on flat and curved surfaces. They used a rotating apparatus they had built themselves. In 1889 Otto Lilienthal published his book Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst, Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation. Today it is regarded as the most important publication on flight technology of the 19th century. After jumps from a springboard in his garden, he began real gliding flights only in the spring of 1891, from a disused sand pit near Derwitz in Brandenburg. On 9 August 1896 he crashed from a height of about 15 meters, and he died the next day.
His grave carries the sentence Opfer müssen gebracht werden, sacrifices must be made. It is often quoted as his last words. But the inscription was added only in 1940, and German Wikipedia considers it unlikely that these were his last words.
Not Whether, but When
In 1814 the jurist Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut published an essay on the necessity of a general civil law for Germany. He called for one simple and understandable civil code for all German lands. In the same year Friedrich Carl von Savigny replied with Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft, on the vocation of our age for legislation and legal science. For Savigny, law grows organically, and legal scholarship should first take up the customary law of the people. Erst am Ende dieser Entwicklung sah Savigny eine Kodifikation als möglich an. (Only at the end of this development did Savigny consider a codification possible.) The German Civil Code was passed in 1896, after 23 years of work. It came into force on 1 January 1900.
The Vote That Was Stopped
The governing coalition planned to pass the Building Energy Act, known as the heating law, on 7 July 2023. In late June, the coalition agreed on changes, and a synopsis of 94 pages followed on 30 June. A member of parliament, Thomas Heilmann of the CDU, applied to the Federal Constitutional Court. On 5 July 2023, the court ruled that the second and third readings could not take place that week. It doubted that the members could exercise their right to deliberate, given the strong compression of the timetable and the complexity of the bill.
Articulated, Not Heaped
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant has a chapter on the architectonic of pure reason. There he writes: Ich verstehe unter einer Architektonik die Kunst der Systeme. (By an architectonic I understand the art of systems.) Kant describes a whole built from an idea: Das Ganze ist also gegliedert (articulatio) und nicht gehäuft (coacervatio). (The whole is therefore articulated and not heaped up.) And he adds: Die Idee bedarf zur Ausführung ein Schema, the idea needs a schema for its execution.
Words for the Long View
Weitsicht, Weitblick — far sight, far view. Both are praise for a person who decides.
kurzsichtig — short-sighted. It is said of a decision or a policy as often as of eyes.
Strohfeuer — a straw fire. It burns brightly and goes out at once. The word describes a success or an enthusiasm with no lasting effect.
Planungssicherheit — planning certainty. Businesses, schools and public bodies ask for it, and governments promise it.
Nach mir die Sintflut — after me, the flood. It describes a person who acts without regard for what comes later. The French original, après nous le déluge, is usually attributed to Madame de Pompadour, but the attribution is not proven.