The friendship between Goethe and Schiller is one of the best known in German literature. They addressed each other as Sie. Goethe told Schiller: Sie haben mir eine zweite Jugend verschafft und mich wieder zum Dichter gemacht. You have given me a second youth and made me a poet again. The music writer Graham Johnson notes that Goethe never said du even to Schiller. Goethe did move to du with the composer Carl Friedrich Zelter. This happened in 1812, when Zelter’s stepson had shot himself. In his reply to Zelter’s letter, Goethe addressed him for the first time with the brotherly du.
Merz Offers Klingbeil the Du
At the end of March 2025, during the coalition talks, Lars Klingbeil appeared on the ARD talk show Caren Miosga. He reported that Friedrich Merz, then 69 years old, had offered him the du a few days earlier. Klingbeil described the relationship with care: Wir wollen gar nicht beste Freunde werden, aber ein Vertrauensverhältnis ist gerade dabei zu wachsen. We do not want to become best friends, but a relationship of trust is starting to grow. A few days later, a newspaper headline called the two men die Duz-Partner, the du partners.
Saying Du Does Not Sell
In 2021 Susanne Hensel-Börner of the HSBA Hamburg School of Business Administration and Udo Kords of the FOM published a study titled Duzen bringt keine Vorteile, saying du brings no advantage. In an experiment, 308 participants watched short videos of sales staff greeting customers in a bank, a car dealership and a sports shop. The staff used either Sie or du. The authors report: Kunden reagieren mehrheitlich positiver auf die Anrede mit Sie. Most customers respond more positively to being addressed with Sie. Taken across all three settings, the likelihood of buying that participants reported was significantly higher with Sie.
Reachable After Hours
Surveys for the DGB-Index Gute Arbeit of the German Trade Union Confederation ask employees about work outside their working hours. Of those surveyed, 23 percent said they are very often or often reachable in their free time. In 2025, about 40 percent had done unpaid work for their employer outside their normal hours, about 14 million people. And 44 percent work longer than agreed.
Please Contact My Deputy
Ich bin bis einschließlich Freitag nicht im Büro. In dringenden Fällen wenden Sie sich bitte an meine Vertretung, Frau Weber. I am out of the office until Friday inclusive. In urgent cases, please contact my deputy, Ms. Weber. A German out-of-office reply usually names the Vertretung, the person who is responsible for the area while one is away. Before the holidays, teams agree on a Vertretungsregelung, an arrangement for who covers for whom.
Volkswagen Switches Off the E-Mail
At the end of 2011 Volkswagen began to switch off e-mail on company phones after work. From 18:15 until 7:00 the next morning, the BlackBerrys of the employees covered receive no mail. The rule covered more than 1,100 employees. It did not apply to managers.
The Department Head Who Wanted His Sie Back
In 1996 an international clothing retailer took over a store where a department head had worked since 1977. Under the new owner, everyone used du and first names. The department head went along with it for about 22 months. Then he demanded to be addressed with Sie again, and went to court. On 29 July 1998 the Regional Labor Court of Hamm dismissed his claim. The du had been introduced ohne ersichtlichen Widerstand der Belegschaft, without visible resistance from the staff, and he had accepted it by his own conduct. The right to decide how one is addressed, the court said, has relativ enge Grenzen, relatively narrow limits. A trade magazine named the employer as H&M. The published court text does not give the name.
Drinking Brotherhood
The traditional switch from Sie to du is called Brüderschaft trinken, drinking brotherhood. The dictionary DWDS explains it as agreeing to say du to each other, and records phrases such as wir haben auf Brüderschaft angestoßen, we drank a toast to brotherhood, and wollen wir nicht Brüderschaft machen?, shall we not drink brotherhood? German Wikipedia notes that younger people and workforces usually switch to du at once. If the du is offered from the wrong side, older or more traditional people sometimes find it inappropriate.
Authority in Front of the Name
A German business letter often shows, in front of the signature, how far the signer’s authority reaches. i. A., im Auftrag, means on instruction. The signer carries out a task but has no power of attorney. i. V., in Vertretung, means acting as a representative, with power of attorney. ppa., per procura, marks a Prokurist, who holds the broad commercial power of attorney of German law. The Commercial Code requires it: the Prokurist must sign with an addition that shows the Prokura.
A Serious Word for Serious Work
Friedrich Schiller’s Das Lied von der Glocke (The Song of the Bell, 1799) was a staple of the German Gymnasium until about 1950. It follows the casting of a bell. After the master’s opening call to his journeymen, the first reflection of the poem reads: Zum Werke, das wir ernst bereiten, / Geziemt sich wohl ein ernstes Wort; / Wenn gute Reden sie begleiten, / Dann fließt die Arbeit munter fort. / So laßt uns jetzt mit Fleiß betrachten, / Was durch die schwache Kraft entspringt. (For the work that we prepare in earnest, a serious word is fitting. When good words go with it, the work flows on briskly. So let us now consider with care what comes from our weak strength.)