Kostenrechnung. German business education treats cost accounting as a discipline in its own right, with its own vocabulary and its own exams, distinct from financial accounting. Selbstkosten, own-costs. Deckungsbeitrag, contribution margin. Zuschlagskalkulation, overhead absorption. The tradition assumes a price is built upward from documented inputs, and teaches the building.
The calculation
Die Kalkulation. The German word for working out what something must cost — materials, labour, overhead, margin — and the noun is used as though it produces a result rather than an estimate. Das ist so kalkuliert ends a conversation about price. The figure was derived, and the derivation is available.
Fixed book prices
Die Buchpreisbindung. German law fixes the retail price of books. Every shop sells the same title at the same price, and the publisher sets it. The price is treated as a property of the book rather than of the transaction.
The architects’ fee scale
Die HOAI. Until 2019, German law set both minimum and maximum fees for architects and engineers. Charging below the minimum was not permitted. The justification, stated by the professional chambers, was that binding rates protect planners and clients from ruinous price competition that would endanger quality and safety.
The European Court of Justice struck the binding rates down on 4 July 2019, holding that they obstructed price competition contrary to the Services Directive. Germany had to be told by a foreign court that price is something to compete on.
At any price
At any price. Used in German almost exclusively as a warning. Er wollte es um jeden Preis — he wanted it at any price — describes someone who has lost their judgment, not someone who is determined.
The price is right
The German title of the television show known in English as The Price Is Right, in which contestants guess the retail price of consumer goods. The premise only works if prices are knowable — if there is a right answer to guess. The show is built on the assumption that every item has one correct price.
Greed is great
Greed is great — an advertising slogan run by the electronics chain Saturn from 2002, shortly after the discount laws were repealed. It became one of the most argued-about slogans in German advertising history, blamed in public debate for a coarsening of commercial culture. The company eventually dropped it.
A campaign celebrating the pursuit of low prices caused a national argument about what the country had become.
What costs nothing is worth nothing
What costs nothing is worth nothing. Said in German about free advice, free offers and heavy discounts. It reverses the usual direction of suspicion. The doubt attaches not to the expensive thing but to the cheap one.
Worth its price
Worth its price. The German word for something that is good value, and it is built from Preis and wert. Not cheap. Not a bargain. Worth what it costs, which is a different and higher claim.
Cheap, and once fair
The modern German word for cheap, and it is rarely a compliment. Billigware, cheap goods. Eine billige Ausrede, a cheap excuse. Billiglohn, low wages.
The word once meant fair and proportionate — it survives in that sense only in recht und billig. Somewhere along the way, the German word for equitable became the German word for inferior.