Before the Trying Archives - understand-culture

The Vocabulary of the Stage Before

Haben Sie ein Konzept?
Do you have a concept? The usual question to someone with a new idea.

das Grobkonzept, das Feinkonzept
The rough concept and the detailed concept. Two written stages before anything is built.

die Machbarkeitsstudie
The feasibility study.

die Trockenübung
The dry exercise. A run-through without the real thing.

die Schnapsidee
The schnapps idea. The dictionary DWDS defines it as a crazy idea and marks the word as disparaging.

unausgegoren
Not yet fermented. An idea that is not yet mature, and so unfinished and unclear.

ins Blaue hinein
Into the blue. Without a plan.

Versuch macht klug.
Trying makes you wise. The proverb on the other side.

Permission to Experiment

The German Passenger Transport Act contains an Experimentierklausel, an experimentation clause. Zur praktischen Erprobung neuer Verkehrsarten oder Verkehrsmittel, for the practical testing of new types or means of transport, the licensing authority may allow exceptions to the law on application, for at most five years. Volkswagen’s ride-pooling service MOIA started in Hamburg on 15 April 2019 under this clause. Its permit ran until the end of 2022. In March 2021 the law was reformed, and in September 2022 MOIA received a regular permit for the first time. On 19 May 2025 the federal cabinet adopted a draft law on Reallabore, real-world laboratories. They allow innovations to be tested for a limited time and under official supervision. The law aims to make such tests easier to set up. The Bundestag passed it on 25 June 2026.

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 Business Plan Competition

Since 1995 the Businessplan-Wettbewerb Berlin-Brandenburg, a competition of written business plans, has supported new founders. Two independent jurors review each plan confidentially against fixed criteria, and every participant receives individual feedback. In the 2025 competition there were 557 submissions, and 213 jurors wrote 1,114 evaluations. According to the organizers, 12,577 business concepts have been submitted since the competition began, and 2,370 companies have come out of it. Participants can now submit a Business Model Canvas instead of, or alongside, a full plan. Each phase also includes a pitch event, where teams receive direct feedback from the jury.

The Project Must Be Approved First

Trainee IT specialists in Germany carry out a project in their company as part of their final examination. Before they start, they submit a written project description. Under the training regulation, it must describe the starting situation and the goal of the project and set out a schedule. The examination board must then approve it. The Chamber of Commerce in Nuremberg tells its trainees: Bevor Sie mit der Durchführung Ihrer Projektarbeit beginnen, müssen Sie die Genehmigung durch den Prüfungsausschuss abwarten. (Before you begin your project work, you must wait for the approval of the examination board.) At the Chamber of Commerce in Arnsberg, a trainee whose application is rejected receives the reasons by email, revises the application and submits it again.

Maturity Level Zero

The German Association of the Automotive Industry, the VDA, has a method called Reifegradabsicherung für Neuteile, maturity assurance for new parts. It measures how mature a project is at agreed points in product development. The scale runs from maturity level 0 to 7. Level 0 is the Innovationsfreigabe für Serienentwicklung, the innovation release for series development.

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.

The Book Before the Engine

On 27 February 1892 Rudolf Diesel applied to the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin for a patent on a Neue rationelle Wärmekraftmaschine, a new rational heat engine. He received it on 23 February 1893, as a patent on a working process for combustion engines. In 1893 he also published a book: Theorie und Konstruktion eines rationellen Wärmemotors, Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine. Through the book he came into contact with Heinrich von Buz, the general director of the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg. From 1893, with financial support from Krupp, Diesel developed his engine there. The first ignition came on 10 August 1893. The first working engine was finished in 1897. German Wikipedia notes: Aus der geplanten halbjährigen Entwicklungszeit waren vier lange Jahre mit zahlreichen Rückschlägen geworden. (The planned half year of development had become four long years with many setbacks.)