German football coaches erstellen einen Matchplan, they draw up a match plan for each game. The sports writer Christoph Biermann used the word as the title of his 2018 book, Matchplan. Die neue Fußballmatrix. In 2021, a column in the weekly Der Freitag teased the coaches. When journalists press them about their plan, the column said, they explain it in a way that nobody is likely to understand.
The Plan Game
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.
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.
Kant on planning
“Making plans is at times a luxuriant, boastful pursuit of the mind by which one gives oneself an air of creative genius, demanding what one cannot do, criticizing what one cannot do better, and suggesting what one does not know where it is to be found.”
“Pläne machen ist mehrmalen eine üppige, prahlerische Geistesbeschäftigung, dadurch man sich ein Ansehen von schöpferischem Genie gibt, indem man fordert, was man selbst nicht leisten, tadelt, was man doch nicht besser machen kann, und vorschlägt, wovon man selbst nicht weiß, wo es zu finden ist.”
Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), German philosopher.
“more tense the nerves”
“Je gedehnter das Vorhaben, desto gespannter die Nerven.” Translation: The longer the project, the more tense the nerves.
Daniel Mühlemann (born 1959), nature photographer, aphorist and translator.
Nietsche on planning
“Making plans and making resolutions brings with it much good feeling, and he who has the strength to be nothing but a plan-maker all his life will be a very happy man. But he will occasionally have to rest from this activity, in that he executes a plan — and then comes the anger and disillusionment.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
“Pläne machen und Vorsätze fassen bringt viel gute Empfindungen mit sich, und wer die Kraft hätte, sein ganzes Leben lang nichts als ein Pläne-Schmiedender zu sein, wäre ein sehr glücklicher Mensch: Aber er wird sich gelegentlich von dieser Tätigkeit ausruhen müssen, dadurch dass er einen Plan ausführt — und da kommt der Ärger und die Ernüchterung.”
goals of others
“Planlosigkeit erreicht spielend Ziele – andrer.” In English: “A lack of plan easily achieves goals – of others.”
Manfred Hinrich (1926 – 2015) – German philosopher, philologist, teacher, journalist, author of children’s songs, aphorist and writer.
“also forgiven”
“Entworfen bloß, ists ein gemeiner Frevel, Vollführt, ists ein unsterblich Unternehmen; Und wenn es glückt, so ist es auch verziehn.”
Translation: “Just designed, it’s a common sacrilege. Completed, it’s an immortal enterprise. And if it succeeds, then it is also forgiven.”
Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805), German physician, poet, philosopher and historian; is considered one of the most important German-speaking playwrights and poets.