In August 2025 the regional newspaper Nordkurier showed its readers’ favorite appliances from the GDR. The headline was Sie funktionieren noch tadellos, they still work perfectly. One reader’s washing machine from 1983 was still in full use. Another wrote of an RG 28 hand mixer: Der hat mich noch nie im Stich gelassen. It has never let me down.
No One Gave a Sehr Gut
In a poll for Bild am Sonntag, published in June 2019, the institute Emnid asked 1,009 people to grade the federal government with school grades. The cabinet received an average of 4 plus, 3.8. Only nine percent gave it a gut, good. Nobody gave it a sehr gut. 26 percent failed it.
The Moped From the GDR
Simson mopeds from East Germany may still ride at 60 kilometers per hour if they were first registered under the old GDR rules before 28 February 1992. Newer mopeds are limited to 45. The reason is a clause in the Unification Treaty of 1990. Production ended in 2002. The historian Jens Schöne calls the mopeds robust and comparatively easy to repair, which mattered in the GDR.
How many are still on the road is uncertain. The Federal Motor Transport Authority counts 20,000 registered GDR mopeds. Experts assume there are far more.
Demanding but Doable
In 2019 pupils in several German states protested that the mathematics Abitur had been too hard. Some started online petitions. Hamburg’s school authority decided to adjust the marking standard for this special case. The exams would be marked better than originally planned.
In Bavaria, after a petition, the ministry told the state parliament’s education committee that it saw no sign that the marking key needed to change. An official of the ministry said the general tenor was mostly that the exam had been anspruchsvoll, aber machbar, demanding but doable.
Buying for the Dump
In 2010 Cosima Dannoritzer’s documentary Kaufen für die Müllhalde, buying for the dump, opened in many European cinemas. It was about products that are built to break early. In Germany, Stefan Schridde founded an association and a website against such products, Murks? Nein Danke!, botched work? No thanks!
When a Third Fail
In Berlin’s upper secondary school, an exam still counts if more than a third of the students get mangelhaft, deficient, or worse. Only the principal can decide that a new exam must be written. The Berlin Senate explained the rule in October 2024, in answer to a question from a member of the state parliament.
Ten Years in the Test Lab
In its endurance test, Stiftung Warentest runs washing machines through 1,840 wash cycles, about ten years of use. In a test published in October 2014, three of 13 machines failed. The three that failed cost between 395 and 555 euros.
The Average Is the Rule
In the metal and electrical industry of Baden-Württemberg, the collective agreement adds performance pay to base pay. Across a plant, the performance pay is to come to 15 percent of total base pay.
In 2014 the Federal Labor Court ruled on who must prove what. An employer who rates an employee below the 15 percent must prove that the rating is justified. An employee who wants a rating above it must prove that he earned it.
Ninety Percent Want to Know the Lifetime
In October 2024 the Federation of German Consumer Organizations had the institute forsa survey 1,001 people. When buying electrical products, 90 percent would find binding information from the manufacturer about the product’s lifetime important. For 87 percent it mattered whether the device could be repaired.
Of those who had not had a broken device repaired although they wanted to keep using it, 77 percent said that a repair would have been too expensive.
World Class: Nobody
After each half of the Bundesliga season, the football magazine kicker publishes its Rangliste des deutschen Fußballs, the ranking of German football. It places the players by position in classes, with Weltklasse, world class, at the top and Internationale Klasse, international class, below it.
In the ranking of July 2024, the world-class category for goalkeepers read: Weltklasse: Keiner. World class: nobody. The top goalkeeper, Gregor Kobel, was rated international class. No central defender was rated world class either. The winter ranking of January 2024 had also listed nobody as a world-class goalkeeper.