Since 1 January 2018, Section 650b of the Civil Code has regulated how the client of a construction contract can change the work. First, the two parties try to agree on the change and on the extra or reduced payment. The contractor must make an offer. For a change to the agreed result, this applies only if carrying out the change is reasonable for the contractor. If the client is responsible for the planning, the contractor must make the offer only after the client has done the planning for the change and handed it over. If the parties do not agree within 30 days, the client may order the change in text form.
No Roster Without the Works Council
Under Section 87 of the Works Constitution Act, the works council has a say over the start and end of daily working hours, including breaks. It also has a say over how working time is spread across the days of the week. A hospital in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania sent the nurses’ rosters to its works council about a month in advance. It treated silence by the 10th of the month as consent. On 10 November 2015, the state labor court of appeal ruled that this was not enough. The works council must agree expressly. The employer may not set it a deadline or treat its silence as consent. Without agreement, the conciliation board decides.
Leave Cannot Be Recalled
Once an employer in Germany has granted an employee statutory leave, it cannot call the employee back from it. The Federal Labor Court ruled so on 20 June 2000. Even an agreement that allows the employer to recall the employee is void, because it violates the mandatory law on leave.
No Early Election Without a Procedure
The Bundestag has no right to dissolve itself. An early election is possible only by a defined route. One route is a vote of confidence. If the chancellor loses it, the federal president may dissolve the Bundestag within 21 days, on the chancellor’s proposal, but is not obliged to. This has happened in 1972, 1983, 2005 and 2024. On 16 December 2024, 207 of 707 members who voted expressed confidence in Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with 116 abstentions. On 27 December, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier cleared the way for a new election, which was held on 23 February 2025.
The Vote That Was Stopped
The governing coalition planned to pass the Building Energy Act, known as the heating law, on 7 July 2023. In late June, the coalition agreed on changes, and a synopsis of 94 pages followed on 30 June. A member of parliament, Thomas Heilmann of the CDU, applied to the Federal Constitutional Court. On 5 July 2023, the court ruled that the second and third readings could not take place that week. It doubted that the members could exercise their right to deliberate, given the strong compression of the timetable and the complexity of the bill.
Friction
In Vom Kriege, On War, Carl von Clausewitz has a chapter on friction. He writes: Es ist alles im Kriege sehr einfach, aber das Einfachste ist schwierig. (Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.) Friction, he says, is the only concept that corresponds fairly generally to what distinguishes real war from war on paper. Action in war is movement in a resistant medium. Knowing this friction is a main part of the much-praised experience of war.
If-Then Plans
The psychologist Peter Gollwitzer of the University of Konstanz studies how plans help people reach their goals. His best-known idea is the implementation intention, in German a Wenn-dann-Plan, an if-then plan. It decides in advance: if situation Y arises, then I will do X. In 2006, Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran analyzed 94 independent tests. If-then plans had a positive effect of medium to large size on reaching goals. In a university news article of 2019, Gollwitzer was quoted as saying that people normally reach 20 to 30 percent of their goals, and 60 to 70 percent when they plan how they will reach them.
The Word Detail
German took the word Detail from French. Duden traces it to détailler, to divide into individual parts. German has built a family of words on it. Detailplanung is detailed planning. Detailgenauigkeit is accuracy down to the detail. Detailfreude is joy in detail.
Words for Too Much Detail
kleinkariert — small-checked, like squared paper. It describes a person whose thinking is narrow and petty.
Paragraphenreiter — a rider of paragraphs, someone who insists on the letter of every rule.
Pi mal Daumen — pi times thumb. It describes a rough estimate made without exact calculation.
A Law for Every Case
On 1 June 1794, the Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preußischen Staaten, the General State Law for the Prussian States, came into force. It had 19,194 sections. Its authors had aimed to solve every possible case and to leave no ambiguity or room for interpretation. One section obliged a healthy mother to breastfeed her baby. Most of the code remained in force in Prussia until 1900. The Max Planck encyclopedia of European private law calls the usual view of it as casuistic legislation one-sided, because the code also contains highly abstract rules.