A German income tax assessment often carries a note: Der Bescheid ist nach § 165 Abs. 1 AO teilweise vorläufig. The assessment is partly provisional. The explanations then list the points that are still open, one by one. A typical line reads Die Festsetzung der Einkommensteuer ist … vorläufig hinsichtlich, the income tax is assessed provisionally with regard to, followed by the open question. Often a court case on that question is still pending.
Every Borrowed Passage
A German thesis ends with a signed declaration. At the Goethe University in Frankfurt, students of the geosciences affirm that they wrote the work on their own and used keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel, no sources or aids other than those listed. Every passage taken from another text, wörtlich oder sinngemäß, word for word or in substance, must be marked as such. The University of Hildesheim asks for the source in jedem einzelnen Fall, in each individual case. The Frankfurt form now adds a sentence. Ich trage die Verantwortung für die Richtigkeit KI-generierter Inhalte. I bear responsibility for the correctness of AI-generated content.
The True Is the Whole
In the preface to his Phänomenologie des Geistes, published in 1807, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote: Das Wahre ist das Ganze. The true is the whole. The whole, he went on, is only the being that completes itself through its development. Of the absolute he said that it is essentially a result, and that only at the end is it what it truly is. A result without the path that led to it is worth nothing to him. Das nackte Resultat ist der Leichnam. The bare result is the corpse.
Theodor W. Adorno later turned the sentence around in Minima Moralia. Das Ganze ist das Unwahre. The whole is the untrue.
The Vocabulary of Patchwork
Stückwerk — piecework. Duden defines Stückwerk sein as recht unvollkommen und daher unbefriedigend sein, to be quite imperfect and therefore unsatisfying. The Luther Bible uses the word in 1 Corinthians 13:9. Denn unser Wissen ist Stückwerk. For our knowledge is piecework.
Flickwerk — patchwork, from flicken, to patch. Duden: work that is pieced together and not done in a professional way.
schludern — to work sloppily.
husch, husch — quick, quick. Duden’s example: das geht nicht so husch, husch, it cannot be done that quickly.
nichts Halbes und nichts Ganzes — neither half nor whole.
ganz oder gar nicht — all or nothing.
The Banana Principle
German customers, especially software users, speak of the Bananenprinzip, the banana principle. Bananas are harvested green and ripen later. In the same way, a product is delivered unfinished and matures over time through customer feedback and the maker’s repairs. The saying is Das Produkt reift beim Kunden, the product ripens at the customer’s. The term is negative. A user who speaks of Bananensoftware is unhappy with it.
One definition adds a detail. The customer receives the unfinished product ohne entsprechende Hinweise, without being told.
Every Item Counted
Section 240 of the German Commercial Code requires every merchant to record everything the business owns and owes genau, exactly, with the value of each single item. The merchant does this when the business starts, and again at the end of every business year. In a shop this means the Inventur, the stocktaking. Every item in stock is counted and recorded. It usually means closing the shop for a day, classically on December 31. A section on the annual accounts, Section 246, opens with the heading Vollständigkeit, completeness.
Not Before the Whole Ring
Richard Wagner saw his cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen as a single whole. When its first part, Das Rheingold, was ready, the cycle was not. Wagner wanted to wait until it was complete and stage it himself. King Ludwig II of Bavaria did not want to wait. He scheduled the performance at the Royal Court and National Theater in Munich, and Das Rheingold was first performed on September 22, 1869. Wagner stayed away from the premiere.
The Weimar Edition
In 1883, the year of Martin Luther’s 400th birthday, work began on a critical edition of everything he wrote. Its title is D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe, a critical complete edition. It is known as the Weimar Edition. It was planned to be finished in 1983. In a paper published in 1984, the Luther scholar Walther von Loewenich wrote that it had 118 volumes and that der völlige Abschluß, the full completion, would probably not quite be reached by then. The edition was completed in 2009, after 126 years and about 80,000 pages.
A Task Designed for Eternity
The Monumenta Germaniae Historica was founded in Frankfurt am Main on January 20, 1819. Its driving force was the statesman Freiherr vom Stein. The society set out to publish the sources of German and European history of the Middle Ages. Two hundred years later the work continues, with almost 450 volumes. A history the society published for its bicentenary calls the task letztlich auf Ewigkeit angelegt, ultimately designed for eternity, and a Daueraufgabe, a permanent task. Missing editions are named openly. Such a gap is called an Editionsdesiderat, a wanted edition.
Ulm Minster
The foundation stone of Ulm Minster was laid on June 30, 1377. In 1543 construction stopped for good, officially for reasons of cost. For three hundred years the main tower stood unfinished, at about 70 meters under an emergency roof. Restoration and completion began in 1844. In 1890 the main tower reached its full height of 161.53 meters. The builders worked from the medieval design of Matthäus Böblinger, which the architect August Beyer modified.