After the war of 1870 to 1871, the new German Empire created a war treasure, the Reichskriegsschatz, from French payments. It was worth 120 million gold marks. From 1874, it lay in 1,200 chests of gold coins in the Juliusturm, the Julius Tower of the citadel in Spandau. In 1913, the treasure was raised to 360 million gold marks. In 1914, at the start of the First World War, it was used for its purpose. The tower’s name came back in the 1950s. Finance Minister Fritz Schäffer held back budget surpluses for West German rearmament, and the political debate called the hoard the Juliusturm. His budget policy followed the principle of the guter Hausvater, the good father of the household. In the third quarter of 1956, the hoard reached more than seven billion marks. In the end, much of the money saved for rearmament went to social policy, above all to a pension reform that made pensions rise regularly.
Risks Into the Budget
In June 2015, the federal reform commission on the construction of large projects presented its final report. It explained why such projects so often cost more than planned. Cost estimates neglect existing risks and are often well below the costs that can really be expected. The regular underestimation of costs and time is often politically motivated. Even where risks were assessed, they usually did not enter the budget approved for the project. A study it cited of 170 large projects found an average cost increase of 73 percent, although the report noted that the study was not representative. Its third recommendation is titled Risikomanagement und Erfassung von Risiken im Haushalt, risk management and recording risks in the budget. Risks should be named when funds are requested. Identifying and assessing them, and planning countermeasures, should be a condition for receiving money. Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt summed it up: risk buffers and professional risk management make cost and time plans more reliable.
Care Before a Quick Shot
In September 2022, politicians from the opposition and from the governing coalition pressed Chancellor Olaf Scholz to send tanks to Ukraine faster. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann of the FDP, a coalition party, asked: Auf was um Himmels willen warten wir noch? What in heaven’s name are we still waiting for? Scholz described his course as besonnen und entschieden, level-headed and decisive. On 17 February 2023 he explained his approach at the Munich Security Conference: Und bei allem Handlungsdruck, den es ohne Zweifel gibt: In dieser entscheidenden Frage gilt: Sorgfalt vor Schnellschuss, Zusammenhalt vor Solovorstellung. For all the pressure to act, which no doubt exists, this rule applies: care before a quick shot, unity before solo performances. He added that support had to be set up from the start so …, dass wir sie lange durchhalten, so that it can be kept up for a long time. By then, Germany had also agreed to deliver Western battle tanks.
Back to Nine Years
In 2001 Saarland became the first western German state to shorten the Gymnasium, the academic high school, from nine years to eight. Most other states followed. The Abitur after only twelve school years got a nickname, the Turbo-Abitur. Then the states turned back. Lower Saxony returned to 13 years after the summer of 2015. Bavaria, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein also decided to return. North Rhine-Westphalia began the change in the 2019/20 school year, and its first regular nine-year class takes the Abitur in 2027. An SPD education expert in the NRW state parliament said that politics had bowed to the pressure of business associations when it introduced the eight-year system. Pupils, he said, now needed more time for the development of their personality. The German Economic Institute estimated the direct cost of the return at about 1.2 billion euros nationwide. In Baden-Württemberg a parents’ initiative collected more than 100,000 signatures. On 29 January 2025 the state parliament passed a law to return to the nine-year Gymnasium from the 2025/26 school year.
The Permanent Forest
In 1922 the forest scientist Alfred Möller of Eberswalde published Der Dauerwaldgedanke, the idea of the permanent forest. Its core is the Stetigkeit des Waldwesens, the continuity of the forest as a living whole, above all by giving up clear-cutting. Möller’s example was the Bärenthoren estate, where Friedrich von Kalitsch had managed a pine forest this way since 1884. Von Kalitsch said: Ich mache niemals Kahlschläge und durchforste meinen ganzen Wald persönlich auszeichnend. I never clear-cut, and I personally mark the trees for thinning in my whole forest. Möller called clear-cut forestry Holzackerbau, timber farming. Under the German Empire, the usual practice was to plant single-species stands of spruce and pine and to harvest them after a few decades. A presentation on the website of the Brandenburg forest administration puts the idea in one line: Stetigkeit ist das Gegenteil von Plötzlichkeit. Continuity is the opposite of suddenness.
The Year of Separation
A German who wants a divorce must normally wait. Under § 1566 of the Civil Code, a marriage is presumed to have failed wenn die Ehegatten seit einem Jahr getrennt leben, when the spouses have lived apart for one year and both want the divorce or one agrees. If one spouse does not agree, the period is three years. Germans call this the Trennungsjahr, the year of separation. A legal advice site explains its purpose: Das Einhalten des Trennungsjahres soll übereilte Scheidungen verhindern. The year is meant to prevent hasty divorces. Couples can also separate inside one apartment. They must then keep separate households, with no shared bed, meals, shopping or laundry. A divorce before the year is over is possible only in cases of severe hardship, such as violence, and the courts set a high bar for it.
The Zero Must Stand
Die Null muss stehen! The zero must stand, which means: keep a clean sheet. Before the 1997 UEFA Cup final against Inter Milan, Schalke 04 coach Huub Stevens said: “‘Die Null muss stehen!’ Das ist unser Wahlspruch.” The zero must stand. That is our motto. Schalke won the cup on 21 May 1997.
The phrase became Stevens’s trademark. When he returned to Schalke in December 2020, a fan’s message called it “der ewige Spruch”, the eternal saying. Stevens is Dutch, but the saying became part of German football.
Stones You Can Build On
Auf diese Steine können Sie bauen. You can build on these stones. The building society Schwäbisch Hall has used this slogan since 1962, with its logo of four building blocks from 1956. The company says the blocks stand for security, trust, competence and reliability.
The fox has been the brand’s mascot since 1975. According to the company, 89 percent of people connect the slogan with the brand.
How a Coming Generation Is to Live
At Christmas 1942 the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an essay for a small circle, Nach zehn Jahren, After Ten Years. It was meant for his parents, his friend Eberhard Bethge and his resistance colleagues Hans von Dohnanyi and Hans Oster. In it he wrote: “Die letzte verantwortliche Frage ist nicht, wie ich mich heroisch aus der Affäre ziehe, sondern [wie] eine kommende Generation weiterleben soll.”
The ultimate responsible question is not how I heroically extricate myself from the affair, but how a coming generation is to go on living. Bonhoeffer called talk of heroic downfall unheroic, because it did not dare to look into the future.
The Full-Coverage Mentality
die Vollkaskomentalität
the full-coverage mentality. Vollkasko is fully comprehensive car insurance. The word describes the expectation that someone should cover every risk in life.
Germans use the word to criticize themselves. In 2023 Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research, wrote: “Diese Vollkaskomentalität ist heute die größte Gefahr für die Zukunftsfähigkeit Deutschlands.” This full-coverage mentality is today the greatest danger to Germany’s future.