Martin Luther’s 95 Theses of 1517 carry the Latin title Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum, a disputation to clarify the power of indulgences. They were meant as a basis for discussion among expert theologians. Their preamble begins: Aus Liebe zur Wahrheit und im Verlangen, sie zu erhellen, sollen die folgenden Thesen in Wittenberg disputiert werden … (Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following theses shall be debated in Wittenberg …) Luther asked those who could not come to debate in person to take part in writing instead. The debate he hoped for never took place. Instead, a heresy trial began in 1518, and in the end Luther was excommunicated.
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.
The Hamburg Agreement
In Germany, schools are the business of the states. On 28 October 1964 the heads of government of all the states adopted the Hamburger Abkommen, the Hamburg Agreement. It set a common start of the school year on 1 August and a total of 75 working days of school holidays. It also set uniform names for the types of school and for the grades, and a foreign language in all types of school from grade 5. Moving the start of the school year required short school years in many states. After long negotiations the change was complete by 1 August 1967. The agreement stayed in force until 9 February 2021.
The Vocabulary of the Inventor
der Tüftler
Someone who likes to puzzle over a tricky technical problem until it is solved.
der Erfindergeist
The inventive spirit.
deutsche Ingenieurskunst
German engineering art. A fixed phrase of praise.
Daniel Düsentrieb
The German name of the Disney inventor known in English as Gyro Gearloose. In German-speaking countries the name stands for the brilliant, slightly scatterbrained inventor. His motto in the German comics, Dem Ingeniör ist nichts zu schwör, nothing is too hard for the engineer, comes from Heinrich Seidel’s “Ingenieurlied” of 1871.
das Land der Tüftler und Erfinder
The land of tinkerers and inventors. In 1999 this phrase summed up the image of the state of Baden-Württemberg.
A Dissertation Nobody Could Judge
In 1922 the University of Heidelberg rejected Hermann Oberth’s doctoral dissertation on space travel. According to German Wikipedia, the reason was that there was no recognized expert on the subject. Oberth submitted the same manuscript as a diploma thesis in Klausenburg, today Cluj in Romania, and passed the state examination in 1923. In the same year the Munich publisher Oldenbourg printed it. Oberth had to pay the printing costs himself. The book became a success. From 1923 to 1938, with interruptions, he worked as a secondary school teacher in Transylvania.
The Age of Criticism
In 1781 Immanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason. In a footnote to its preface he wrote: Unser Zeitalter ist das eigentliche Zeitalter der Kritik, der sich alles unterwerfen muß. (Our age is the true age of criticism, and everything must submit to it.) Religion, through its holiness, and lawmaking, through its majesty, usually try to escape it. But then, Kant wrote, they arouse justified suspicion. They cannot claim the sincere respect die die Vernunft nur demjenigen bewilligt, was ihre freie und öffentliche Prüfung hat aushalten können, which reason grants only to what has been able to withstand its free and public examination.
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.
When the Neuer Markt Closed
On 10 March 1997 Frankfurt opened the Neuer Markt, a stock market segment for young growth companies. Its index peaked on 10 March 2000. In the following 31 months it lost more than 96 percent of its value, over 200 billion euros. Some companies had published misleading figures. The segment was closed on 5 June 2003. Ten years after its start, the magazine Computerwoche wrote that many shareholders remembered it mit Grausen, with horror. The crash had shaken many investors’ trust in shares for good, and many still kept their hands off them. According to the German Shares Institute, the number of shareholders in Germany had fallen by 2.5 million since 2000.
Not Whether, but When
In 1814 the jurist Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut published an essay on the necessity of a general civil law for Germany. He called for one simple and understandable civil code for all German lands. In the same year Friedrich Carl von Savigny replied with Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft, on the vocation of our age for legislation and legal science. For Savigny, law grows organically, and legal scholarship should first take up the customary law of the people. Erst am Ende dieser Entwicklung sah Savigny eine Kodifikation als möglich an. (Only at the end of this development did Savigny consider a codification possible.) The German Civil Code was passed in 1896, after 23 years of work. It came into force on 1 January 1900.
Making the Reformation Last
Cities and territories that adopted the Reformation gave themselves a Kirchenordnung, a church order, often adopting one written elsewhere. According to German Wikipedia, these orders marked the beginning of a phase of consolidation. In northern Germany the leading author was Johannes Bugenhagen. Braunschweig adopted his order in 1528, Hamburg in 1529 and Lübeck in 1531. With the Braunschweig order Bugenhagen laid the foundations of the school system and regulated care for the poor. In 1528 Martin Luther saw on his visits to parishes that ordinary believers knew the faith only in fragments. In 1529 he wrote the Small Catechism, which explains the faith in questions and answers. It was meant as a basis for the heads of households to teach their families. It is still often used today in confirmation classes.