Germany, Innovation, Standing - understand-culture

A Matter for Professionals

On 10 March 2019 the FDP leader Christian Lindner commented on the school strikes for the climate. Children and young people, he said, could not be expected to see all the global connections, what is technically sensible and what is economically feasible. Das ist eine Sache für Profis. (That is a matter for professionals.) The organizers of Fridays for Future replied: Profis beim Thema Klimaschutz sind Wissenschaftler*innen. (The professionals on climate protection are scientists.) In March 2019, according to the initiative, more than 23,000 scientists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland signed a statement that supported the students. Volker Quaschning, a Berlin professor of renewable energy systems, said: Wir sind die Profis und sagen: Die junge Generation hat Recht. (We are the professionals, and we say: the young generation is right.)

Neither side questioned that the experts should decide. They argued only about who the experts were.

Weber on the Idea and the Dilettante

In 1917 Max Weber gave a lecture in Munich called Wissenschaft als Beruf, Science as a Vocation. An idea, he said, comes when it pleases, not when we please. But normally it prepares itself only auf dem Boden ganz harter Arbeit, on the ground of very hard work. A dilettante can also have ideas of great consequence. What the dilettante lacks is die feste Sicherheit der Arbeitsmethode, the firm certainty of a working method. For this reason he is usually unable to check the idea, to assess its consequences or to carry it out.

Who May Draw Your House

In Bavaria, the plans for a house that needs a building permit must be prepared by a design author who is bauvorlageberechtigt, entitled to submit building plans. This right belongs to people who may use the protected title of architect, and to engineers on an official list. Master craftsmen in bricklaying, concrete construction and carpentry, like some graduates and state-certified technicians, have a limited right. They may submit plans for small residential buildings with no more than three apartments. A homeowner without one of these qualifications cannot submit plans he has drawn himself, however good they are. Each German state sets its own rules, and the details differ.

The Right to Award Doctorates

In Germany, the right to award doctorates belongs to universities and to institutions of equal status. Hesse found a way to extend it. Under its higher education law, a university of applied sciences can receive a time-limited right to award doctorates, but only in a field where it has proven enough research strength. In 2016 the criteria included at least 12 research-strong professors in the field and, in non-technical fields, at least 150,000 euros of external research funding over three years. In the same year, Hochschule Fulda became the first university of applied sciences in Germany to receive the right. At first it applied to one doctoral center in the social sciences. Other fields were added later.

The Master Student

At German art academies, a student who completes the regular course with above-average results can stay on as a Meisterschüler, a master student, usually for one or two more years. At the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, students work from their third semester in the class of one professor, and the professor can put a student forward for the title of master student. Joseph Beuys entered the class of the sculptor Ewald Mataré in the winter semester of 1947/48. In 1951 Mataré named him his master student. In 1961 Beuys was appointed to the academy’s chair of monumental sculpture.

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.

Goethe Against Newton

Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre, Theory of Colors, appeared on 16 May 1810. One part of it is a polemic against Newton’s theory of color. Between 1810 and 1832 many natural scientists and mathematicians commented on the work. Almost half of them opposed Goethe. Among the statements from natural science, a third supported him. Hermann von Helmholtz admired Goethe’s scientific work, but he called its main thesis simply wrong. Goethe himself valued his research on color more than all his literary work. He told Johann Peter Eckermann: Auf alles, was ich als Poet geleistet habe, bilde ich mir gar nichts ein. (I think nothing of all that I have achieved as a poet.) What made him proud, he said, was that he was the only one in his century who knew the truth in the difficult science of color.

Sworn Doctor of Holy Scripture

In October 1512 Martin Luther received his doctorate in theology at the University of Wittenberg. The Elector paid the costs of the ceremony. Luther’s doctoral oath bound him to Holy Scripture. In his later conflict with the papal church, Luther appealed to this obligation. From then on he lectured regularly on a book of the Bible, until November 1545.

The Commoner Who Reformed the Prussian Army

Gerhard Scharnhorst was born in 1755 near Hanover. His father, an army quartermaster, came from a family of smallholders. He became a teacher at the war school in Hanover and wrote military handbooks, among them a Handbuch für Offiziere in den angewandten Teilen der Kriegswissenschaften, a handbook for officers in the applied parts of the science of war. His reform proposals went unheeded in Hanover. In 1801 he entered Prussian service as a lieutenant colonel of artillery. He was ennobled in 1802. On 25 July 1807 he became chairman of the Military Reorganization Commission, which rebuilt the Prussian army. Officers of the Prussian Guards later mocked his origins.

The Fool of Lake Constance

Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin was a cavalry officer. After the maneuvers of 1890 he left active military service as a lieutenant general and began to work on a rigid airship. In 1894 an expert commission appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm II declared the project unworkable. Its members included the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz. After two sessions it advised the Prussian war ministry not to support the project. From 1895 people called Zeppelin a fool, and some laughed at him in the street. After a series of accidents with his airships he was known as der Narr vom Bodensee, the fool of Lake Constance. The Kaiser called him den Dümmsten aller Süddeutschen, the dumbest of all South Germans. In 1896 Zeppelin joined the Association of German Engineers, the VDI. On 2 July 1900 his first airship, LZ 1, rose from Manzell on Lake Constance.