The German word for a simulation game is Planspiel, a plan game. The savings banks have run a stock market simulation for school students, the Planspiel Börse, every year since 1983. The 2023/24 round ran for 17 weeks. Since 2009, a sustainability rating has counted as much as the portfolio result. In the district of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen alone, 361 students in 131 teams took part in the round that ended in spring 2026.
The Plan Approval
A new road or rail line in Germany goes through a Planfeststellungsverfahren, a plan approval procedure. The chambers of industry and commerce describe it as a strictly formalized procedure that makes a comprehensive decision on whether a project is permitted. The municipalities put the plan on public display for one month. Anyone whose own interests are affected can then raise objections, within a set period. At the end, the authority issues the Planfeststellungsbeschluss, the plan approval decision. This one decision includes and replaces all the separate permits, consents and authorizations that the project would otherwise need. The approved plan is the permit.
The Budget Plan
Under Article 110 of the Basic Law, the federal budget is a plan, the Haushaltsplan, and parliament enacts it as a law. The government may spend only money that parliament has approved in this way. If a new year begins before the budget law is passed, Article 111 applies. The government may then spend only what is needed to keep existing institutions running, to meet legal obligations, and to continue construction and purchases already funded in an earlier budget. This happens regularly in election years, when forming a new government takes time. After the governing coalition broke apart in November 2024, the budget for 2025 could not be passed in time. The Bundesrat approved the budget law for 2025 on 26 September 2025, with retroactive effect from 1 January 2025.
Words for detail
Der Teufel steckt im Detail — the devil is in the detail, and in German it is a warning rather than an observation.
Ins Detail gehen — to go into the detail, said approvingly of a discussion that is doing its job.
Gründlich — going to the ground of a thing, the standard German word of praise for work.
Schlampig, oberflächlich, husch-husch — sloppy, superficial, hurry-hurry. Three dismissals, all of work that stopped before the detail.
Without a plan
Ohne Plan — without a plan, meaning aimless. Planlos — plan-less, an adjective applied to people, and an insult.
Er hat keinen Plan — he has no plan — is colloquial German for he has no idea. The word for a plan became the word for understanding.
The planned economy
Germany has an unusually loaded relationship with the word, given the twentieth century, and Planwirtschaft is used as a criticism of excessive central planning. The suspicion attaches to planning as an economic system. It does not attach to planning as professional practice, and Germans hold both views without difficulty.
Planning lead-time
Planungsvorlauf. Planning lead-time. German projects allocate a named period before execution begins, and it appears in the schedule as a phase with its own duration. Starting work before it has elapsed is a departure from the method, not an acceleration of it.
A plan is a plan
Plan ist Plan. Wir bleiben beim Plan. Das war so nicht geplant — that was not planned that way, said as an objection rather than as a description.
And the opposite: Wir fahren auf Sicht, we are driving by sight, used when the plan has been abandoned. It is never said with satisfaction.
The contract supplement
Der Nachtrag. In German construction contracting, work beyond the agreed scope is handled through a supplement — priced, documented and agreed before it is carried out. Deviation from the plan is itself a contractual act with its own paperwork.
The change request
Der Änderungsantrag. A change to a German project plan goes through a formal request: what is to change, why, what it costs, what it moves, who approves. The plan can be changed. It cannot be drifted away from.