On 6 March 2019, FC Bayern Munich published a statement on national coach Joachim Löw’s decision to stop selecting Thomas Müller, Mats Hummels and Jérôme Boateng. It said that the selection of the squad liegt ausschließlich in der Verantwortung von Joachim Löw, lies solely in the responsibility of Joachim Löw.
But the club called the timing and the circumstances in which the decision was announced to the players and to the public fragwürdig, questionable.
In the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing reviewed the performances at the theater in Hamburg. He had announced that he would follow every step of the art of both the playwright and the actor. In an issue dated 19 April 1768 he admitted: Die letztere Hälfte bin ich sehr bald überdrüssig geworden. I soon grew tired of the second half.
The reason, he wrote, was that there were actors but no art of acting with firm rules: Wir haben Schauspieler, aber keine Schauspielkunst. An actor with nothing but a lucky routine therefore felt insulted in every way by a review. Gelobt wird er sich nie genug, getadelt aber allezeit viel zuviel glauben. He will never believe he has been praised enough, but always believe he has been blamed far too much.
Lessing cited an old observation. Artists grow more sensitive to criticism the less certain and clear the principles of their art are.
In 2019 the tech site t3n reported on a Randstad survey of 400 employees in Germany, aged 18 to 65. 24 percent said that they do not relate negative appraisals to their work, but take them personally. 21 percent said they feel uncomfortable when they receive feedback from managers.
Before the 2024 European Championship, the national coach Julian Nagelsmann told Mats Hummels that he would not be in the squad. Hummels later described the talk to the newspaper Sport Bild: Nicht einmal zwei Minuten. Not even two minutes.
He called it short and disappointing. Then he added: Ich brauche in solchen Momenten aber auch kein langes Gespräch und keine große Erklärung. Das hat mir gereicht. But in such moments I need no long talk and no big explanation. That was enough for me. As he understood it, the reasons were related to age, such as fitness.
In 2017 the Federal Administrative Court ruled on when a superior is too biased to appraise a civil servant. Bias exists when the superior is not willing or not able to judge the official sachlich und gerecht, objectively and fairly.
Tensions that arise from the work itself are, as a rule, not enough. Neither are emotionally colored reactions in a single case, nor single inappropriate, flippant or clumsy formulations.
In this case the court still sent the matter back. The lower court had not examined the superior’s earlier letters and an appraisal from 2006 with harsh wording.
In 2025 the German Medical Association published the second edition of its guide to peer review in medicine. Doctors from outside visit a unit and reflect on its work together with the doctors there. The guide describes their attitude: fachlich-kritisch und zugleich kollegial-wertschätzend, critical on the medical substance and at the same time collegial and appreciative.
The unit requests the review itself. It cannot be ordered, and no sanctions may be derived from it. The guide puts clarification first, ahead of a hasty judgment.
Ulm University gives its staff a guideline for voluntary feedback talks between employees and supervisors. The preparation sheet for employees, who give their supervisors feedback, sets this rule. Sprechen Sie über das Arbeitsverhalten beziehungsweise über die Arbeitsergebnisse und nicht über Persönliches. Talk about work conduct or work results, and not about personal matters.
Criticism is to be put forward sachlich, factually, without personal attacks. The talk creates no legally relevant facts or documents, and it is not part of the personnel file.
The school quality institute of North Rhine-Westphalia, QUA-LiS NRW, publishes a lesson unit that teaches pupils how to give feedback. Its text on feedback starts with a plain rule. Sie betreffen nicht die Persönlichkeit, sondern das Verhalten einer Person. Feedback comments concern not the personality but the behavior of a person.
Whoever gives feedback makes no value judgments and no accusations, and does not moralize. Feedback must be concrete, tied to a specific example where possible. It is given in the first person, with ich, I, and not with man, one.
Under Section 94 of the Works Constitution Act, an employer who wants to set general principles for appraising staff needs the consent of the works council. If the two sides cannot agree, an arbitration board decides.
In 2014 the Federal Labor Court explained the purpose of the rule. Such principles are meant to make the assessment of conduct or performance objective or uniform. The co-determination right is to ensure that an employee is judged nur nach seiner Arbeitsleistung, only by his work performance, and by his personal suitability for development in the company. The case concerned staff appraisals at a rehabilitation clinic.
In 1984 the Federal Administrative Court set a rule for everyone who grades an exam. The examiner must take note of the work mit innerer Distanz und frei von Emotionen, with inner distance and free of emotions. The court called this the Gebot der Sachlichkeit, the requirement of objectivity. It derived the rule from the rule of law and from equal opportunity.
The case concerned a take-home paper in Hamburg’s first state exam in law. The first examiner had written remarks that a lower court found almost insulting. The court said that harsh words in the margin, such as Unsinn, nonsense, are not in themselves unobjective. A grade becomes unobjective when the examiner gives free rein to his annoyance at weak work.