In 1795 Immanuel Kant published Zum ewigen Frieden, Toward Perpetual Peace, in Königsberg. The first article reads: Es soll kein Friedensschluß für einen solchen gelten, der mit dem geheimen Vorbehalt des Stoffs zu einem künftigen Kriege gemacht worden. No treaty of peace shall count as one if it was made with the secret reservation of material for a future war. Kant explained that such a treaty would be ein bloßer Waffenstillstand, Aufschub der Feindseligkeiten, nicht Friede. It would be a mere ceasefire, a postponement of hostilities, not peace. Peace means the end of all hostilities. For that reason, Kant wrote, adding the word perpetual to it is already a suspicious repetition.
Withdrawing the Condemnations
On Reformation Day 1999, the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church signed the Gemeinsame Erklärung zur Rechtfertigungslehre, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The ceremony took place in the Lutheran St. Anne’s Church in Augsburg. How a person is justified before God had been a central point of dispute in the Reformation. The direct history of the declaration began in Germany. A key step was a study, completed in 1986, that asked whether the old condemnations still divided the churches. The final text states a Konsens in Grundwahrheiten, a consensus in basic truths. Its aim was a differenzierter Konsens, a differentiated consensus, in which each side keeps its own tradition and language where these do not contradict each other. On that basis, the mutual condemnations of the 16th century zurückgenommen werden und heute nicht mehr gelten, are withdrawn and no longer apply today.
The Motto Over the Desk
Mein Sohn, sey mit Lust bey den Geschäften am Tage, aber mache nur solche, daß wir bey Nacht ruhig schlafen können. My son, take pleasure in business by day, but make only such deals that let us sleep peacefully at night. In Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (1901), the family gives Thomas Buddenbrook a large memorial tablet with this motto in Gothic letters. The occasion is the firm’s hundredth anniversary on 7 July 1868. Thomas has just bought the entire grain harvest of the estate Pöppenrade while it is still standing in the field. He paid half price to an owner who badly needed money. When he first thought about the deal, he described it in his own words: Unreinliche Manipulation … Im Trüben fischen … Brutale Ausbeutung … Einen Wehrlosen übers Ohr hauen … Wucherprofit. Unclean manipulation, fishing in muddy water, brutal exploitation, cheating a defenseless man, a usurer’s profit. During the anniversary celebration, a telegram arrives. Hail has destroyed the Pöppenrade harvest.
The motto is said to come from the author’s own family firm. The sources disagree on which Johann Siegmund Mann wrote it.
Communicative and Strategic Action
In 1981 the philosopher Jürgen Habermas published Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, The Theory of Communicative Action. The book separates two kinds of social action. In strategisches Handeln, strategic action, each person is oriented only toward his own success. In kommunikatives Handeln, communicative action, people try to reach Verständigung, a shared understanding. Habermas wrote: Im kommunikativen Handeln sind die Beteiligten nicht primär am eigenen Erfolg orientiert. In communicative action, the participants are not primarily oriented toward their own success. They still pursue their own goals. But they do so on the condition that they can align their plans with each other.
Better Not to Govern
Shortly before midnight on 19 November 2017, the FDP declared the exploratory talks for a Jamaica coalition with the CDU, the CSU and the Greens a failure. The party leader, Christian Lindner, said the four partners had not built a Vertrauensbasis, a basis of trust. He said the FDP had made many offers of compromise. But after weeks of talks there was still ein Papier mit zahllosen Widersprüchen, offenen Fragen und Zielkonflikten, a paper with countless contradictions, open questions and conflicting goals. Where agreements did exist, they were erkauft mit viel Geld der Bürger oder mit Formelkompromissen, bought with a lot of the citizens’ money or with formula compromises. A Formelkompromiss is a form of words that covers a disagreement without settling it. Then Lindner said: Es ist besser, nicht zu regieren, als falsch zu regieren. It is better not to govern than to govern wrongly.
The Honest Broker
On 19 February 1878, Otto von Bismarck spoke in the Reichstag about the crisis in the Balkans. He described the part he wanted Germany to play in settling it. He did not want Germany to den Schiedsrichter spielen, to play the arbiter, and say So soll es sein, this is how it shall be, with the power of the German Reich behind it. He saw the role as more modest, and he took an example from ordinary life. It would be mehr die eines ehrlichen Maklers, der das Geschäft wirklich zu Stande bringen will, more that of an honest broker who really wants to bring the business about. Four months later, the great powers met in Berlin under his chairmanship.
The phrase is often quoted in a smoother form: Ich will nichts mehr als der ehrliche Makler zwischen uneinigen Klienten sein, der das Geschäft zustande bringt. I want nothing more than to be the honest broker between clients who disagree, who brings the business about. This form is usually placed at the Congress of Berlin, and it has no clear source. The speech as printed in 1878 uses the wording above.
The Mediation Committee
When the Bundestag and the Bundesrat disagree on a law, Article 77 of the Basic Law provides for a joint committee. The Vermittlungsausschuss, the mediation committee, has 32 members. Sixteen come from the Bundestag, and each of the sixteen states has one seat. The members from the states are not bound by instructions from their governments. The sessions are confidential. The Bundestag describes what happens once the committee is called: Es beginnt die Suche nach Kompromissen, um das Gesetz „zu retten“. The search for compromises begins, to “save” the law. The result is an Einigungsvorschlag, a proposal for agreement, and the chambers then decide on it. The committee is needed most when the two chambers have different majorities. It was called 102 times between 2002 and 2005, and three times between 2013 and 2017.
Concerted Action
On 14 February 1967, at the suggestion of economics minister Karl Schiller, representatives of the state, the unions, the employers and academic economists met for the first time in a Konzertierte Aktion, a concerted action. The purpose was to coordinate what each side did in economic and social policy. It never became a permanent institution. In 1977 the unions left in protest, because the employers’ associations had challenged the new co-determination law before the constitutional court. In 2022, with prices rising after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz brought the format back. The first meeting took place on 4 July 2022. Scholz called it a good step to continue diese wichtige Tradition der Sozialpartnerschaft, this important tradition of social partnership. He described its method as Unterhaken, linking arms.
Words for a Bad Outcome
ein fauler Kompromiss — A rotten compromise. A compromise that settles nothing and will not last.
der Kuhhandel — Cow trading. Petty bargaining over advantages, especially in politics. The word has been in use since the end of the 19th century.
Politik wie auf dem Basar — Politics as in the bazaar. The headline of a Berliner Zeitung commentary on 13 March 2025, about the parties bargaining over the reform of the debt brake.
The Deal in Criminal Court
German newspapers call it the Deal. The law calls it Verständigung, an understanding. Since a law of 29 July 2009, Section 257c of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows a criminal court to reach an agreement with the parties on the course and outcome of a trial. The agreement may cover the sentence. It may not cover guilt: Der Schuldspruch sowie Maßregeln der Besserung und Sicherung dürfen nicht Gegenstand einer Verständigung sein. The verdict of guilt and measures of correction and prevention may not be part of an agreement. The court’s duty to find the truth also remains. On 19 March 2013, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the law was not unconstitutional, at least for now, and that informal agreements outside it are not permitted. The court wrote: Zentrales Anliegen des Strafprozesses ist die Ermittlung des wahren Sachverhalts. The central concern of a criminal trial is to find the true facts.
Practice did not always follow. For a study presented to the court in 2012, Karsten Altenhain surveyed 330 judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers in North Rhine-Westphalia. Almost 60 percent of the judges said that they made most of their agreements without the record the law requires.