Innovation Archives - Page 5 of 12

From Pilot to Rule

das Pilotprojekt
The pilot project. The usual form in which something new is tried.

verstetigen
To make steady. What happens to a pilot project that worked: Das Projekt wird verstetigt. The project is made permanent.

in den Regelbetrieb überführen
To move into regular operation. The pilot becomes the normal way of working.

flächendeckend einführen
To introduce across the whole area.

der Leitfaden
The guiding thread. A written guide for practitioners.

Merke:
Remember. In German schoolbooks, the rule to be learned is printed in a box under this word.

Wo steht das?
Where is that written? The question asked of anyone who claims a rule.

In 1968 the philosopher Hans Albert published his Traktat über kritische Vernunft, Treatise on Critical Reason. In it he argued that every attempt to justify a claim with final certainty ends in one of three ways. The justification goes on without end, or it runs in a circle, or it simply stops at some point. He called this the Münchhausen trilemma, after the baron who claimed he had pulled himself out of a swamp by his own hair. Breaking off the chain of justification, Albert argued, amounts to an appeal to a dogma. German Wikipedia sums up its purpose: um den Behauptungen das Risiko des Scheiterns an möglichen Einwänden zu nehmen, to protect claims from the risk of failing in the face of possible objections. Since reason can err, theories must be exposed to criticism again and again. Albert was a leading voice of critical rationalism in Germany. In Germany, its best-known declared follower in politics was former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

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.

The Lane Rescue Workers Taught First

West German road rules have required a free lane for rescue vehicles, today called the Rettungsgasse, since 1971. For a long time, however, the rules did not say clearly where to form it on a road with four lanes. Most rescue services already taught a simple rule. Drivers in the far-left lane move to the left, and everyone in the lanes to the right moves to the right. In 2016 this practice was written into the road traffic regulations. Since 14 December 2016, § 11 says that the lane is formed zwischen dem äußerst linken und dem unmittelbar rechts daneben liegenden Fahrstreifen, between the far-left lane and the lane directly to its right. Higher fines followed in October 2017.

A Written Rule Against Rules

A 2006 baseline measurement found that German businesses carried about 49 billion euros a year in bureaucracy costs. In August 2006 a law created the Nationaler Normenkontrollrat, the National Regulatory Control Council. It checks the follow-up costs of every bill and regulation drafted by the federal government. In 2015 the federal government committed itself to a rule called “one in, one out”. If a new rule creates a burden for business, an equal relief must in principle be created elsewhere.

A Share in the Wind Farm

In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a developer who builds a new wind farm must offer at least 20 percent of the project company to its neighbors. People who live within five kilometers may buy shares, and so may the nearby municipalities. The stated purpose of the law is to improve acceptance of new wind turbines. A developer challenged the law. In a decision of 23 March 2022 the Federal Constitutional Court found it almost entirely compatible with the Basic Law. The court accepted the legislature’s premise that acceptance of wind farms is especially high when they are run by a local company unter bürgerschaftlicher und kommunaler Mitverantwortung, with shared responsibility of citizens and municipalities.

New Paths

In October 1853 Robert Schumann published an article called Neue Bahnen, New Paths, in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the journal he had co-founded in 1834. The article introduced a young composer: Er heißt Johannes Brahms, kam von Hamburg, dort in dunkler Stille schaffend. (His name is Johannes Brahms. He came from Hamburg, where he had been working in dark silence.) Schumann told his readers that Brahms had been trained by an excellent teacher and recommended to him by einem verehrten bekannten Meister, a respected and well-known master. Das ist ein Berufener, Schumann wrote. This is one who has been called. Brahms wrote to Schumann that he feared he could not meet the standards the public would now expect.

Failure as Opportunity

On 13 March 1998 the theater director and action artist Christoph Schlingensief founded a party called Chance 2000 in a circus tent at the Volksbühne in Berlin. It was first also known as the Partei der letzten Chance, the party of the last chance. Its slogan was Scheitern als Chance, failure as opportunity. For one action Schlingensief invited six million unemployed people to bathe in the Wolfgangsee in Austria. In the federal election of 1998 the party received 0.058 percent of the vote.

Three Books on How to Play

Within four years, three German musicians wrote down how to play their instruments. Johann Joachim Quantz published his method for the flute in Berlin in 1752. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach published his Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, in Berlin in 1753. Leopold Mozart published his Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, a thorough violin method, in Augsburg in 1756. In 1829 the composer Carl Friedrich Zelter wrote that Mozart’s method could be used solange die Violine eine Violine bleibt, as long as the violin remains a violin. Together, the three books are today the most important source on how music was performed in the middle of the 18th century.

Starting Over on Nuclear Waste

On 22 February 1977 the state government of Lower Saxony named the salt dome at Gorleben as the only site for a nuclear waste repository. Protest grew in the region and beyond. On 3 May 1980 about 5,000 opponents occupied the drilling site and proclaimed the Republik Freies Wendland, the Free Republic of Wendland. In 2013 a law restarted the search from the beginning. A commission of scientists and representatives of social groups worked from 2014 to 2016. The Site Selection Act of 2017 requires a partizipatives, wissenschaftsbasiertes, transparentes, selbsthinterfragendes und lernendes Verfahren, a procedure that is participatory, based on science, transparent, self-questioning and learning. In September 2020 Gorleben dropped out of the search. The law aims for a decision in 2031. In late 2022, documents of the responsible federal company estimated that the search could last until 2046, or in another scenario until 2068.