To be vom Fach. Of the subject.
Said of someone who genuinely knows the field, as distinct from someone who has an opinion about it. Er ist vom Fach ends an argument.
There is no comfortable English equivalent. “He knows his stuff” is about the person. Vom Fach is about belonging to a body of knowledge.
Cobbler, stay with your lasts.
The story is from Pliny the Elder. A shoemaker criticized the sandal in a painting by Apelles, and the painter corrected it. When the cobbler went on to criticize the leg, the painter told him to stop.
The German use of the phrase is not an instruction in modesty. It asserts the opposite of what it appears to say: within your last, your judgment outranks anyone’s.
A word for someone with deep command of a narrow field and no grasp of anything beyond it.
It is used with contempt, and it is reserved for the genuinely expert. You cannot be a Fachidiot without first being a Fachmann.
A culture that needs a word for the excess of a virtue has thought hard about the virtue.
Sache, the matter. Verstand, understanding. Sachverstand is understanding of the matter itself.
English took expertise from the Latin expertus, tried and tested by experience. The English word points at what has happened to the person. The German word points at the subject.
Two cultures locating the same quality in different places.
Fragen Sie den Fachmann — ask the specialist.
Da müssen Sie den Experten fragen — you’ll have to ask the expert about that.
Das kann ich nicht beurteilen — I can’t judge that, said as a complete and unembarrassed answer.
A German declining to give an opinion outside his field is not being modest. He is observing a boundary he expects others to observe too.
Guilds were abolished in Germany. The ranks of Lehrling, apprentice, Geselle, journeyman, and Meister, master craftsman, were retained.
The institution went. The ladder stayed.
German building applications, structural calculations, gas and electrical installations, and safety inspections must be signed by a person holding a specific qualification, entered in a specific register. The signature is not an approval of somebody else’s work. It transfers the liability to the person qualified to carry it.
Becoming a Facharzt takes five to six years of full-time hospital work, following six years of basic medical training.
Each state’s Weiterbildungsordnung specifies the minimum content and duration for every specialty. All training periods must be recorded in a logbook and confirmed by the supervising trainer, after which the doctor registers for the specialist examination before the state medical association.
Eleven or twelve years before the title. The German patient asking for a Facharzt is asking for that, and knows it.
The term Sachverständiger, expert, is not legally protected in Germany. Anyone insufficiently qualified may call themselves one and offer their services on the market.
So German law built a second tier: öffentlich bestellt und vereidigt, publicly appointed and sworn. Only specialists whose knowledge lies considerably above average are appointed, after an exacting examination procedure, and their work then stands under the permanent supervision of the appointing body — the chambers of crafts, of industry and commerce, of architects, of engineers.
One line from the guidance issued by the Regensburg chamber states the principle exactly: performing your profession properly is not yet sufficient proof of special expertise.
Doing the job well is the floor, not the qualification.
German law reserves 53 trades to those holding a Meisterbrief. The Handwerksordnung recognizes roughly 130 trades, divided into Anlage A — the 53 where a Meisterbrief is legally required to operate independently — and Anlage B, around 41 further trades where registration is required but no Meister qualification.
The law states the rationale explicitly. These are trades where improper execution poses a risk to public safety, health or life. A poorly installed gas line, a defective circuit, a compromised roof.
The qualification involves 1,000 to 1,500 hours of coursework across four parts: technical, theory, business law, and the competence to train apprentices.
A German plumber is not someone who is good at plumbing. He is someone the state has certified as having mastered it.