Wer viel misst, misst Mist.
Whoever measures a lot measures rubbish.
The saying warns that every new measurement adds a new error.
First Count the Cash
Kassensturz, counting the cash. When German parties begin to negotiate a coalition, they often start with a full count of the public finances. In November 2017 the SPD and the CDU in Lower Saxony did this before anything else. The purpose was to find out which political wishes could be financed.
Minister-President Stephan Weil described the first meeting: “Das hatte heute nicht den Charakter einer Entscheidungssitzung, sondern eher einer ersten Lesung.” Today was not a meeting for decisions, but more like a first reading.
Assignments to Examine
German coalition agreements often contain Prüfaufträge, assignments to examine a question before it is decided. The 2025 federal coalition agreement announced 88 of them, together with 18 commissions and working groups.
Critics see this as a way to postpone decisions. In 2014 the Greens in Saxony called the new state coalition a “Prüf-Koalition”, a coalition of examining.
Measured After the Shock
On 2 June 2006 the education ministers of the German states adopted an overall strategy for monitoring education. It has four parts: international school studies, a central test of the national education standards in a comparison of the states, comparison tests in classrooms, and a joint education report of the federal and state governments.
The aim was an education policy based on evidence. The strategy followed the performance problems that had become obvious since the end of the 1990s.
In 2014 a study in the journal Die Deutsche Schule found that the results were not processed and discussed in sufficient depth. In six or seven states, schools received only the share of correct answers.
The Wolf Kill Goes to the Lab
When sheep or other livestock are killed in Schleswig-Holstein, a trained examiner inspects the dead animals. “Ziel einer Rissbegutachtung ist es herauszufinden, ob der Verursacher des Schadens ein Wolf war oder nicht.” The goal is to find out whether a wolf caused the damage.
Where possible, DNA samples are taken from the bite wounds. They are sent to the Senckenberg Institute in Gelnhausen. The state pays compensation on the basis of the assessment, and also when a wolf cannot be ruled out. The payments are voluntary and depend on reasonable protection of the herd.
Fifteen Thousand Crashes on the Computer
On 10 September 1959 Mercedes-Benz began systematic crash testing at its plant in Sindelfingen. The first test car was a pre-production vehicle of the coming W 110 series. The movements of the dummy were filmed for analysis.
Today a new model may need up to 15,000 crash simulations and about 150 real crash tests. Its crash test center conducts about 900 crash tests and about 1,700 sled tests each year.
The Father of Statistics
In 1748 Gottfried Achenwall became an associate professor at the University of Göttingen. He gave Statistik, the systematic description of states, the form of an independent discipline. In 1749 he published an outline of the political science of the leading European states.
August Ludwig von Schlözer called him the “Vater der Statistik”, the father of statistics. The national biography adds that the word Statistik does not come from him at all.
Measuring the World
In Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Die Vermessung der Welt, Measuring the World, Alexander von Humboldt cannot pass a hill without measuring its height. He even makes statistics of the lice on women’s heads. The novel appeared in September 2005 and sold more than two million copies.
Kehlmann has called his approach “grundsätzlich ironisch gebrochen”, fundamentally broken by irony.
The Anatomy of the SS State
Before the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, the prosecution under Fritz Bauer asked the Institute for Contemporary History for expert reports. Four historians, Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat, Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, analyzed the structures of the SS state. Their reports were to provide indispensable background information for the trial.
The trial began on 20 December 1963. In 1965 the reports were published as a book, Anatomie des SS-Staates, the anatomy of the SS state.
Two Years for the Gurlitt Collection
About 1,260 works of art were found in Cornelius Gurlitt’s apartment in Munich. About 240 more were found in his house in Salzburg in February 2014. The federal culture commissioner, Monika Grütters, wanted the origin of every picture in the collection cleared up.
A task force worked on the provenance for about two years, at a cost of about 1.9 million euros. It identified works by Liebermann, Matisse, Spitzweg, Menzel and Pissarro as art looted by the Nazis.
After two years of research, only five works had been clearly identified as looted art.