Status Archives - understand-culture

The Vocabulary of Plans

Stundenplan — the hour plan, the school timetable.

Dienstplan — the duty plan, the work roster.

Speiseplan — the food plan, the weekly menu of a canteen.

Lehrplan — the teaching plan, the curriculum.

Fahrplan — the travel plan, the train or bus timetable. In politics, a Fahrplan is also a roadmap, as in der Fahrplan für den Ausstieg, the timetable for the exit.

Schlachtplan — the battle plan. It is said with a smile of any strategy, even one for a family outing.

planmäßig — according to plan. A train arrives planmäßig. An außerplanmäßiger Halt is an unscheduled stop.

Pläne schmieden — to forge plans.

Die Dreigroschenoper, The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, opened on 31 August 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. One of its songs is the Lied von der Unzulänglichkeit menschlichen Strebens, the song of the inadequacy of human striving. It is also listed under the title Ballade von der Unzulänglichkeit menschlichen Planens, the ballad of the inadequacy of human planning.

When the Future Seemed Plannable

Willy Brandt formed his first government in 1969. The head of his Chancellery, Horst Ehmke, and the head of its planning staff, Reimut Jochimsen, wanted a Rationalisierung der Politik, a rationalization of politics, built on modern data processing. The civil service increasingly rejected the planners, and part of the public mocked them. The historian Andreas Rödder describes the new Chancellery building, commissioned by Ehmke in 1970, as a product of the era’s technocratic belief that the future could be planned and shaped. Around 1973 that belief collapsed. Contemporaries called the shift the Tendenzwende, the change of trend.

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.

The Plan Post

In the German civil service, a permanent position is a Planstelle, a plan post. It is a post provided for in the budget plan. Section 49 of the Federal Budget Code is short: Ein Amt darf nur zusammen mit der Einweisung in eine besetzbare Planstelle verliehen werden. (An office may be conferred only together with assignment to an available plan post.) A civil servant who is promoted can be placed in the new plan post with retroactive effect of at most three months.

The Start-Up Grant

Unemployed people in Germany who start a full-time business can apply for the Gründungszuschuss, a start-up grant paid for up to 15 months. Under Section 93 of the Third Book of the Social Code, they must present a statement from an expert body on the Tragfähigkeit, the viability, of the business. A chamber of commerce, a chamber of crafts or a tax adviser can give it. The founder hands the expert body a set of documents. The Federal Employment Agency’s model letter lists them: a business plan, a plan of capital needs and financing, a forecast of sales and profitability, a CV and proof of qualifications. Whether the grant is paid is at the agency’s discretion.

Work Preparation

Arbeitsvorbereitung, work preparation, is a fixed term in German manufacturing and construction. In construction, it is the planning stage that coordinates resources, tasks and work steps, so that the work on site runs efficiently and without disruption. The construction reference work Bauprofessor calls careful work preparation decisive for the success of a building project. It warns that leaving it out can cost five percent or more of the result on a site. In industry, Arbeitsvorbereiter, work preparer, is a job title of its own. One way into the job is a twelve-week course to become a REFA technician.

The General Staff

The Prussian General Staff existed unofficially from 1806 and was formally established by law in 1814. In peacetime, it was responsible for the continuous study of all aspects of war and for drafting and reviewing mobilization and campaign plans. Under Helmuth von Moltke, its chief from 1857, it studied the railway network and built it into its deployment plans. After the First World War, Article 160 of the Treaty of Versailles ordered: “The Great German General Staff and all similar organisations shall be dissolved and may not be reconstituted in any form.” The army continued the work under a new name, the Truppenamt.

Planned Cost Accounting

German cost accounting has a method named for the plan: Grenzplankostenrechnung, flexible marginal planned-cost accounting. It was developed in the late 1940s and the 1950s by the automotive engineer Hans Georg Plaut and the academic Wolfgang Kilger. Plaut published two articles on it in 1953 in the Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft. As the name says, the method is built on planned costs. It is still taught at universities in the German-speaking countries and has been described as the standard for cost accounting in Germany.