systemrelevant
Relevant to the system. In 2020 the Society for the German Language put the word in sixth place among its words of the year. First place went to Corona-Pandemie. During the pandemic the word described jobs and institutions by their role in keeping the whole running.
A Model for Industry 4.0
On 20 April 2016 the German Institute for Standardization, DIN, announced DIN SPEC 91345. It defines the Referenzarchitekturmodell Industrie 4.0, the reference architecture model for Industry 4.0, known as RAMI 4.0. The model was developed in the Plattform Industrie 4.0.
RAMI 4.0 takes the form of a cube of layers. Its three axes are the life cycle of the product, the hierarchy of the plant equipment, and the layers of integration. It serves to describe the basic ideas of Industry 4.0 in a structured way.
Before the Bracket
The German Civil Code is divided into five books. The first book is the General Part. Its rules are vor die Klammer gezogen, placed before the bracket, as in mathematics. With some limits, they apply to all four books that follow.
German law students learn this as das Prinzip des Vor-die-Klammer-Ziehens, the principle of placing rules before the bracket. A study guide for the law exam names the purpose: to avoid repetition in the code.
Living Systems
On 16 December 2004 the state education ministers adopted national educational standards for biology. They build the subject on three basic concepts: system, structure and function, and development. Lebendige Systeme (Biosysteme) sind Gegenstand der Biologie. Living systems are the subject of biology. Lebendige Systeme bestehen aus unterschiedlichen Elementen, die miteinander in Wechselwirkung stehen. Living systems consist of different elements that interact with one another.
Geography as a Systems Science
The educational standards for geography at the intermediate school level start from one idea. Da sich die Geographie als Systemwissenschaft versteht, ist das Hauptbasiskonzept des Faches das Systemkonzept. Because geography sees itself as a systems science, the main basic concept of the subject is the system concept. Its parts are structure, function and process. The German Geographical Society published the 10th edition of the standards in 2020.
The subject looks at the earth as a system of people and environment. The society’s standards for the Abitur of 2024 speak of die komplexen und dynamischen Wechselbeziehungen innerhalb und zwischen physischen und anthropogenen (Sub-)Systemen, the complex and dynamic interactions within and between physical and human systems.
What Holds the World Together
In the scene Nacht of Goethe’s Faust I, published in 1808, Faust says why he has turned to magic. Daß ich erkenne, was die Welt / Im Innersten zusammenhält. So that I may know what holds the world together at its innermost core. He wants to see all working forces and seeds, and no longer rummage in words.
Base and Superstructure
In January 1859, in London, Karl Marx wrote the preface to Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In a few sentences he summed up his theory of society. The relations of production together form the economic structure of society, die reale Basis, worauf sich ein juristischer und politischer Überbau erhebt, the real base on which a legal and political superstructure rises.
Die Produktionsweise des materiellen Lebens bedingt den sozialen, politischen und geistigen Lebensprozeß überhaupt. The way material life is produced conditions social, political and intellectual life as a whole. Es ist nicht das Bewußtsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewußtsein bestimmt. It is not people’s consciousness that determines their being. It is their social being that determines their consciousness.
The Family as a System
From 1974 Helm Stierlin taught in Heidelberg. Around him grew the Heidelberg group of family therapists. A 2006 article on his work describes their subject as problems of the family system that show themselves in the behavior of one person, im individuellen Verhalten sich ausdrückenden Systemproblemen.
On 22 November 2019 the Federal Joint Committee decided to make systemic therapy for adults a benefit of the statutory health insurance. In January 2024 it decided to extend this to children and young people. The committee says the method looks nicht auf die einzelne Person, sondern auf die Interaktionen zwischen Mitgliedern der Familie, not at the single person but at the interactions between members of the family.
Thünen’s Rings
In 1826 Johann Heinrich von Thünen published the first part of Der isolirte Staat, The Isolated State. He imagined a state with one city as its only market, surrounded by rings of farming. What is grown in each ring depends on its distance from the market. In German the model is known as the Thünensche Ringe, Thünen’s rings.
The national biography says that Thünen gave important impulses to location theory and to economic geography. Teaching material for upper secondary geography still presents the rings as a thinking model zur Erklärung räumlicher Ordnungsmuster in der Landwirtschaft, for explaining spatial patterns in farming.
Central Places
In 1933 the geographer Walter Christaller published his dissertation Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland, the central places in southern Germany. It described towns as a hierarchy of central places, each serving the area around it. In 1968 the conference of ministers for spatial planning fixed a hierarchy for the whole country with four levels: upper, middle, lower and small centers.
The concept is now in federal law. Section 2 of the Spatial Planning Act says that settlement ist vorrangig auf vorhandene Siedlungen mit ausreichender Infrastruktur und auf Zentrale Orte auszurichten, is to be directed first to existing settlements with sufficient infrastructure and to central places. Die soziale Infrastruktur ist vorrangig in Zentralen Orten zu bündeln. Social infrastructure is to be concentrated mainly in central places.