A German customer who calls a plumber without agreeing on a price still owes a definite amount. Section 632 of the Civil Code fills the gap. If a fee schedule exists, the scheduled fee counts as agreed. If none exists, the usual fee counts as agreed. The written estimate, the Kostenanschlag or Kostenvoranschlag, is free unless the parties agreed otherwise. Section 649 covers the case where the estimate turns out too low. If the work cannot be done without a substantial overrun, the craftsman must tell the customer without delay. The customer may then end the contract and pay only for the work done so far. The Frankfurt Chamber of Industry and Commerce explains that an overrun of 10 to 20 percent is probably not yet substantial.
Appointment Negotiations
When a German university wants to appoint a professor, the candidate receives the Ruf, the call. Then the Berufungsverhandlungen, the appointment negotiations, begin. The candidate and the university negotiate about funds for equipment, running budgets, staff and rooms. In December 2024 the German Association of University Professors published an analysis of a survey of these procedures. In about three quarters of cases, the whole procedure took longer than twelve months. Only 41 percent of the negotiations ended within three months.
Deals That Fall Through After the Show
In the television show Die Höhle der Löwen, the lions’ den, founders present their companies to investors. The show started on VOX in 2014. A deal is agreed in front of the camera within minutes. The investors check the company only after the recording, and many deals fail at this stage. Some companies did not pass the check because the founders had made false statements on air. The counts differ. The site deutsche-startups.de counted 11 failed deals out of 16 in the first season and 15 out of 21 in the second. The film site Filmstarts counted 35 deals in the first two seasons, of which 26 failed. A technology blog, citing Business Insider, gave a much lower figure: about 40 percent.
The Diaries Bought in Secret
In 1983 the magazine Stern presented what it said were the diaries of Adolf Hitler. The publisher’s management had bought 62 volumes for 9.34 million marks. Only a few members of the management and of the contemporary history desk knew about the purchase. On 25 April 1983, Stern held an international press conference. On 6 May 1983, news agencies reported that the diaries were forgeries. Experts of the Federal Criminal Police Office and of a federal materials testing institute had shown it beyond doubt. The German Wikipedia article names the editors’ greatest failure. The diaries vorschnell veröffentlicht wurden und man das BKA-Gutachten nicht abwartete. They were published too hastily, and the editors did not wait for the police report. In 1992 Helmut Dietl turned the affair into the satirical film Schtonk!.
Whoever Binds Himself Forever
Drum prüfe, wer sich ewig bindet, / Ob sich das Herz zum Herzen findet! / Der Wahn ist kurz, die Reu ist lang. So whoever binds himself forever should test whether heart finds heart. The illusion is short, the regret is long. The lines come from Friedrich Schiller’s Das Lied von der Glocke, The Song of the Bell, first printed in the Musen-Almanach for the year 1800. In the poem they are about marriage. Germans quote the first line for any commitment that is meant to last, such as a partnership, a long contract or a large purchase.
Gut Decisions
In 2007 the psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer published Bauchentscheidungen, gut decisions. He is director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. The subtitle is Die Intelligenz des Unbewussten und die Macht der Intuition, the intelligence of the unconscious and the power of intuition. Gigerenzer argues that people make most decisions intuitively, by rules of thumb. In his view, following such gut decisions is itself a rational strategy, and good intuitions must ignore information. The magazine Bild der Wissenschaft gave the book its science book award.
The book does not praise haste. Gigerenzer separates a gut feeling from a random idea or from naivety.
Socially Necessary Labor Time
In the first volume of Das Kapital, published in 1867, Karl Marx asks what sets the value of a commodity. His answer is a quantity of time. Es ist also nur das Quantum gesellschaftlich notwendiger Arbeit oder die zur Herstellung eines Gebrauchswertes gesellschaftlich notwendige Arbeitszeit, welche seine Wertgröße bestimmt. It is only the amount of socially necessary labor, or the labor time socially necessary to produce a useful thing, that determines the size of its value. Marx defines this time precisely. It is the time needed to make a thing under the normal conditions of production, with the average skill and intensity of the society. A slow or clumsy worker does not make his product more valuable.
As Dear as I Ought
In 1524 Martin Luther published Von Kaufshandlung und Wucher, On Trade and Usury. He quotes the rule of the merchants. In modern German it reads: Ich darf meine Ware so teuer geben, wie ich kann. I may sell my goods as dear as I can. Luther calls this rule the basis of all the tricks of usury. He tells the Christian merchant to ask a different question: Ja, wie teuer soll ich’s denn geben? Wo treffe ich das Rechte und die Billigkeit, dass ich meinen Nächsten nicht übervorteile oder überteuere? How dear should I sell it, then? Where do I find what is right and fair, so that I do not take advantage of my neighbor or overcharge him? Luther also gives the method. The merchant should count the days he spent getting and fetching the goods. He should weigh his labor and his risk, and compare his reward with the wage of a common day laborer.
The Natural Wage on a Gravestone
Johann Heinrich von Thünen was a Mecklenburg landowner and economist. In 1826 he published the first part of Der isolirte Staat, The Isolated State. The second part followed in 1850, the year he died. In it he looked for the naturgemäße Arbeitslohn, the natural wage. He did not mean the wage the market happened to pay. He meant a wage that could be derived. His answer was a formula, the square root of A times P. A is the value of what labor and capital produce. P is what the worker and his family need to live. Thünen wished the formula to be placed on his gravestone. It is there today.
Five Years in Münster and Osnabrück
The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War. In December 1641 the warring parties agreed in Hamburg to hold peace talks in Münster and Osnabrück. The envoys met there from 1643. Disputes over rank and titles delayed the opening of the congress for a long time. Then the sides took more than a year to exchange their demands. The real peace negotiations began in June 1645. Both treaties were signed in Münster on 24 October 1648. The ratifications were exchanged on 18 February 1649. A separate congress in Nuremberg then worked out how to carry out the peace, until July 1650. The treaty became a fundamental law of the Holy Roman Empire. Sources differ on how many delegations took part. German Wikipedia gives about 110 delegations from 16 European states. The Münster city museum speaks of envoys from more than 150 states and territories.