In April 2016 the Federal Agency for Civic Education published an essay on start-ups in Germany. Its authors, Nancy Richter and Thomas Schildhauer, wrote: Aber man muss wissen, dass die deutsche Innovationsmentalität eher inkrementelles Wachstum und damit die Verbesserung von bestehenden Produkten, Services, Prozessen und Geschäftsmodellen unterstützt. (But one must know that the German innovation mentality tends to support incremental growth, and with it the improvement of existing products, services, processes and business models.) Incremental innovation, they noted, needs investments whose use and results can be planned fairly well. According to the innovation reports, Germany is very well positioned in it.
The Civil Code of 1900, Modernized
The German Civil Code, the BGB, came into force on 1 January 1900. It is still in force. Instead of replacing it, the legislature has changed it very many times. In 1976 a reform removed the housewife marriage as the legal model. In 1998 the law on children was reformed. A major overhaul came on 1 January 2002 with the Schuldrechtsmodernisierung, the modernization of the law of obligations. Its trigger was an EU directive on consumer sales. Some experts wanted only to implement the directive. Others wanted a complete revision. The reform cut the standard limitation period from 30 years to three, and it moved several separate laws into the Code itself.
Something Learned Every Day
The Göttingen physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote in one of his notebooks: Man sollte sich nicht schlafen legen, ohne sagen zu können, daß man an dem Tage etwas gelernt hätte. (One should not go to sleep without being able to say that one has learned something that day.) He did not mean a new word. He meant, among other things, the Verbesserung eines Irrtums, in dem wir uns lange befunden haben, the correction of an error we have long held. This could not be done quickly before blowing out the candle. The occupations of the whole day had to aim at it.
In the same notebook stands his much-quoted line about change: Ich kann freilich nicht sagen, ob es besser werden wird wenn es anders wird; aber so viel kann ich sagen, es muß anders werden, wenn es gut werden soll. (I certainly cannot say whether it will get better if it gets different. But this much I can say: it must get different if it is to get good.)
To Cancel and to Keep
The German verb aufheben has opposite meanings. A receipt is aufgehoben when it is kept. A law is aufgehoben when it is cancelled. In his Science of Logic, first published in 1812, Hegel made this double meaning one of his central ideas: Aufheben hat in der Sprache den gedoppelten Sinn, daß es so viel als aufbewahren, erhalten bedeutet, und zugleich so viel als aufhören lassen, ein Ende machen. (In the language, aufheben has a double meaning. It means to preserve and to keep, and at the same time to let stop and to put an end to.) In Hegel’s thought, what is overcome is not thrown away. It is kept in what comes after it.
The Christmas Oratorio
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio was first performed in Leipzig at six services between Christmas Day 1734 and Epiphany 1735. Many of its choruses and arias came from secular works he had written earlier. The opening chorus, for example, comes from a cantata performed on 8 December 1733 for the birthday of the Electress of Saxony. Reusing music in this way, the Parodieverfahren, was not unusual in Bach’s time. It was not a simple copy. Bach moved the pieces into other keys, changed the instruments and gave the new words a new musical meaning in several places.
A Purer Form of a Known Substance
According to his laboratory journal, the Bayer chemist Felix Hoffmann produced acetylsalicylic acid on 10 August 1897, for the first time largely free of by-products. The substance itself was already known. Earlier chemists, among them Karl Kraut, had described ways to make it. After pharmaceutical testing it was registered under the brand name Aspirin. The trademark dates from 1 February 1899. Later, Hoffmann’s colleague Arthur Eichengrün claimed the real credit. German Wikipedia notes that the company documents do not support his account. Only Hoffmann is named as the inventor in the American patent.
Combat Value Enhancement
On 25 October 1979 the first series-built Leopard 2 tank was handed over to the German army. Since then the tank has gone through several Kampfwertsteigerungen, combat value enhancements. Each version carries its own designation, such as A5 or A7V. From 2019, 104 tanks were upgraded to the A7V standard. The next version is called A8, and its delivery was planned for 2025 to 2026.
Sixty Years of the 911
The first Porsche 911 was presented on 12 September 1963 at the motor show in Frankfurt. It still has its engine at the rear, a six-cylinder boxer. Its generations carry their own names: original model, G model, 964, 993, 996, 997, 991 and 992. German Wikipedia sums up its history in one sentence: the 911 was kontinuierlich weiterentwickelt, continuously developed. The 996, from model year 1998, was the first 911 with a water-cooled engine. It also shared many parts, such as headlights and fenders, with the Boxster. This brought the new 996 a lot of criticism, above all because it could be mistaken for a Boxster. People called its headlights Spiegeleier, fried eggs. They were replaced in 2002.
Modernized, Not Replaced
Most years on 1 August, when the new training year begins, a set of revised training regulations comes into force. In 2016 the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training counted the revisions since 2003. Of 243 revised regulations, 206 modernized existing occupations and 37 created new ones. On 1 August 2025 seven modernized occupations started, among them florist, photographer, gold- and silversmith and chimney sweep.
The Small Patent
In 1891 Germany created the Gebrauchsmuster, the utility model. It protected models of tools and everyday objects, or parts of them. It was meant for small and medium-sized businesses that wanted to protect their inventions quickly and cheaply. It also spared the Patent Office from examining many inventions. Utility model number 1 went to a dial made of imitation ivory. On 8 July 1908 a coffee filter with a curved base was registered. It was Melitta’s. To this day, the Patent Office does not examine the substantive requirements of a utility model before registering it. Germans call it the kleines Patent, the small patent. At the end of 2017, 81,001 utility models were in force in Germany.