In autumn 2012, after a 2:0 win over Werder Bremen, Bayern Munich’s sporting director Matthias Sammer said the team had not played gallig enough, with enough bite, and had been lätschern, limp. Coach Jupp Heynckes disagreed with how he had done it, and told him so. Mit der Form, der Art und Weise war ich nicht einverstanden. Das habe ich ihm auch gesagt. I did not agree with the form and the manner. I told him that too. Er weiß, dass es wichtig ist, diese Dinge in geschlossenen Räumen anzusprechen. He knows it is important to raise these things behind closed doors. That season Bayern won the league, the cup and the Champions League.
Praise as Packaging
The German career site Karrierebibel advises against the sandwich method, in which criticism is placed between two pieces of praise. It warns that the criticism can be missed under so much icing. Der Boss redet keinen Klartext! Was er oder sie sagt ist immer nur Verpackung. The boss does not speak plainly. What he or she says is always just packaging. The site warns that managers who use the method become auf lange Sicht unglaubwürdig, not credible in the long run.
Criticizing the Work
Section 193 of the Criminal Code covers tadelnde Urteile über wissenschaftliche, künstlerische oder gewerbliche Leistungen, critical judgments about scientific, artistic or commercial work. It also covers Vorhaltungen und Rügen der Vorgesetzten gegen ihre Untergebenen, reproaches and reprimands by superiors to their subordinates. Such statements are punishable as an insult only if the form of the statement or the circumstances show an insult. So a manager who tells an employee plainly that the work is poor is, as a rule, not punishable for insult, unless the form or the circumstances of the remark make it insulting.
Cheap and Bad
In 1876 the engineer Franz Reuleaux chaired the German panel of judges at the world’s fair in Philadelphia. In his Briefe aus Philadelphia, letters from Philadelphia, he found that German industry stood out for billige und schlechte Exponate, cheap and poor exhibits. His verdict caused a public controversy in Germany.
The Correction After the Test
When a class test comes back in a German school, pupils write a Berichtigung, a correction of their own mistakes. A 2006 guidance letter for English teachers from Berlin’s education administration says: In der Regel sollten Schülerinnen und Schülern die Berichtigung ihrer Arbeiten selbstständig vornehmen. As a rule, pupils should correct their work themselves. The aim is to build Eigenkorrektur, the ability to correct oneself.
Four Wrong Calls
In September 2022 the German Football Association admitted four wrong decisions by its referees in the Bundesliga in one statement. Peter Sippel, the referees’ sporting director for the Bundesliga, went through the cases one by one. A penalty against Cologne for an alleged handball by Luca Kilian, in the game against Union Berlin, was klar und offensichtlich falsch, clearly and obviously wrong. In the game between Hertha and Leverkusen, the video assistant should have intervened after the clear images and recommended an on-field review. The news site t-online called the statement kurios, curious.
A Party’s Report on Its Own Defeat
After the SPD’s defeat in the federal election of 2017, deputy party leader Olaf Scholz demanded a schonungslose Betrachtung der Lage, an unsparing look at the situation. There should be no more excuses in the search for causes, he said. The party leadership under Martin Schulz commissioned an outside working group to analyze the campaign. Its report appeared in June 2018 under the title Aus Fehlern lernen, learning from mistakes. “Die SPD ist in der Krise. In der womöglich tiefsten seit 1949.” The SPD is in crisis, possibly the deepest since 1949. The report says that crisis communication was not among the strengths of the Schulz team.
The Marker in the Master-Singers
Richard Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg premiered in Munich on June 21, 1868. The town clerk Beckmesser holds the guild office of Merker, the marker. In the first act, the young knight Walther sings for admission to the guild. Beckmesser writes each of his faults on a slate with chalk, loudly. Because of the many faults, the masters decide that Walther has versungen, sung himself out. The real Hans Sachs, who lived from 1494 to 1576 and belonged to the Nuremberg guild, once proposed that the judgment of master-songs should not be left to the four markers alone. Several times a year, the audience should judge.
The Federal Court of Audit’s annual remarks
The Bundesrechnungshof, the Federal Court of Audit, checks whether the federal government spends its money properly and economically. It collects its findings in a volume called the Bemerkungen, the remarks. The findings are specific. The Bemerkungen 2025 stated that the expansion of the locks on the Mosel River, at 855 million euros, was neither necessary nor economical. It also reported that the Finance Ministry had spent 35 million euros on more than 17,000 smartphones for the customs service.
Marking every error
From 2009 to 2015, a regulation of the Saxon ministry of education set out how Abitur papers were to be marked. It stated the rule plainly: Sprachliche und formale Mängel sind in allen Prüfungsarbeiten zu kennzeichnen. Errors of language and form must be marked in all exam papers. Each type of error had its own code. R marked spelling, GR grammar and Z punctuation. The same regulation set out separate codes for faults in content. The first marker corrected in red ink, and the second in green.