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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.

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.

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.

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.

Over This Fugue the Author Died

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge, The Art of Fugue, ends with a fugue that breaks off. In the autograph, his son Carl Philipp Emanuel wrote a note at that point. Ueber dieser Fuge, wo der Nahme BACH im Contrasubject angebracht worden, ist der Verfasser gestorben. Over this fugue, where the name BACH was placed in the countersubject, the author died. The first printed edition appeared in 1751. Its preface told buyers that the composer’s eye disease and death had kept him from finishing the work. The family added a chorale as compensation for the incomplete last fugue.

Scholars today consider it unlikely that Bach died while working on this fugue. The gap itself was never hidden.

One Square Meter, Halved

German office paper follows a standard set in 1922. Walter Porstmann proposed it, and the standards committee founded in 1917 adopted it. Size A0 is exactly one square meter. The sides stand in the ratio of 1 to the square root of 2. Every smaller size comes from halving the one before, so a sheet of A4 is one sixteenth of a square meter. In everyday German, DIN A4 simply means an ordinary sheet of paper. The German standard later became the basis of the international standard ISO 216.

The Vocabulary of Correct Work

in Ordnung — in order. The everyday word for acceptable, fine, all right.

Das passt. — That fits. It means that something is right.

haargenau — exact to the hair.

auf den Millimeter genau — exact to the millimeter.

mehr schlecht als recht — more badly than rightly. Barely adequate, said with disapproval.

alle fünfe gerade sein lassen — to let all fives be even. To let something slide and not be strict. People say it of an exception they allow.