unverwüstlich — indestructible. Said of a coat, a car or an old radio.
wertbeständig — keeping its value.
nicht totzukriegen — impossible to kill. Said with affection of an old machine that keeps working.
die Sollbruchstelle — the intended breaking point. An engineering term, now also used for a weak point a maker is suspected of building in on purpose.
die Wegwerfgesellschaft — the throwaway society. It is a reproach.
The Standing Conference of education ministers publishes the Abitur grades of every state. In the figures for 2025, 8,255 pupils finished with the top average of 1.0. That was 3.1 percent of all who passed. In the figures for the school year 2013/14, 4,569 of 324,431 successful candidates had a 1.0, about 1.4 percent.
The comparison has limits. The 2025 figures are provisional. Those for Baden-Württemberg are from 2023/24, and Bavaria had few candidates because of its return to the nine-year Gymnasium. The states also differ. In 2025 the average grade was 2.13 in Thuringia and 2.46 in Schleswig-Holstein.
In a repair café, volunteers help people mend broken things. In October 2018, 660 such initiatives were registered in Germany. In September 2026 about 1,900 were listed. The foundation anstiftung runs the online directory where the initiatives are listed. The idea is usually traced to the Netherlands in 2009.
The federal regulation on civil service careers sets guide values for appraisals. Among the officials appraised in a pay grade, the share soll bei der höchsten Note zehn Prozent und bei der zweithöchsten Note 20 Prozent nicht überschreiten, should not exceed ten percent for the top grade and 20 percent for the second. For fairness in a single case, each limit may be exceeded by up to five percentage points.
The limits were once looser. In 2008 the Federal Administrative Court described an older rule that allowed 15 and 35 percent. In the case before it, the Federal Intelligence Service had set its own limits at 5 and 15 percent. The service said that its new rules were meant to counter Noteninflation, grade inflation.
In February 2016 the Federal Environment Agency published a study on how long electrical devices are used. Among large household appliances, the share replaced within five years because of a defect rose from 3.5 percent in 2004 to 8.3 percent in 2013. Many devices, from smartphones to flat-screen televisions, were replaced although they still worked well. The study could not prove planned obsolescence.
The agency’s president, Maria Krautzberger, said that Germany must consider minimum requirements for product lifetime and quality. She spoke of eine Art Mindesthaltbarkeit, a kind of minimum durability, for electrical devices. The word comes from the best-before date on food.
vor versammelter Mannschaft — in front of the assembled crew. The Duden dictionary’s example comes from the army: der Gefreite wurde vor versammelter Mannschaft getadelt, the lance corporal was reprimanded in front of the assembled unit. In everyday speech the phrase means in front of everyone present. Mannschaft can also mean a work team.
jemanden zur Rede stellen — to put someone to the speech, to call someone to account. Duden notes that Rede here first meant a statement or a justification before a court.
In 1924 Wilhelm Wagenfeld first presented a table lamp, then called MT8. At the time it was not made in large numbers, and no dealer wanted to sell it. Since 1980 the firm Tecnolumen in Bremen has made it, as the only manufacturer authorized by Wagenfeld and his family.
The lamp even made it into the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is also one of the most often counterfeited design objects of all.
In December 2025 Borussia Dortmund drew 2:2 with Bodø/Glimt in the Champions League. Afterward the defender Nico Schlotterbeck criticized the substitutes in public, without naming them. Die Spieler, die reinkommen, verlieren jeden Ball. The players who come on lose every ball. Wenn man reinkommt in der 60. Minute, erwarte ich 30 Minuten Volldampf. If you come on in the 60th minute, I expect 30 minutes at full power.
The coach Niko Kovač backed him. Als Führungsspieler hat er mit Sicherheit auch das Recht, gewisse Sachen anzusprechen. As a leading player he certainly has the right to raise certain things.
In 1954 Leica brought out the M3. It was the first camera of the M series and the first Leica with a bayonet mount for the lens. Leica still builds M cameras with this mount. According to the technology site Notebookcheck, even 70-year-old Leica lenses can be used without restrictions on modern M cameras.
In 2010 the Higher Labor Court of Munich ruled on two warnings. The employer had told some employees of the internal audit department about them. The court found nothing wrong with that. A law firm’s summary of the ruling puts it this way: such information was regelmäßig zu erwarten, zum Teil sogar geboten, to be expected as a rule and in part even required, because the employees shared their work in divided processes.
The court drew the line at the pillory. The employee had not been put an den Pranger. Only a particularly grave pillorying that harmed his honor would have required a public retraction.