Wer wird Millionär?, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, has run on RTL since 3 September 1999. The game has two Sicherheitsstufen, safety levels. The first is 500 euros at the fifth question. The second is 16,000 euros at the tenth question. At the start, each contestant must choose between two versions of the game. In the classic version, a wrong answer after the tenth question still leaves the contestant with 16,000 euros. In the Risikovariante, the risk version, the second safety level is dropped. In exchange, the contestant gets four jokers instead of three. A wrong answer then drops the winnings to 500 euros. In October 2025, a contestant from Darmstadt chose the risk version. He had already won 16,000 euros. He failed the next question and went home with 500 euros.
One Hundred Percent Equity
Wolfgang Grupp began running the textile maker Trigema in Burladingen, in the Zollernalb district, in 1969. Many Germans know him from television. For years he appeared in the advertising slot before the Tagesschau, the main evening news, chatting with an ape about Trigema. As a registered merchant, he was personally liable for the company with all his assets. During the Covid crisis, he said in an interview: Wir haben 100 Prozent Eigenkapital, we have 100 percent equity, so we finance ourselves. Equity is our strength, he said. We have reserves, and with them we got through all crises in the past. Otherwise, he said, he would have to go to the banks every week and ask. The company came through the crisis without loans or state aid. From March to June 2020, it switched to masks and delivered 2.3 million of them.
Two to Three Months’ Pay
The Notgroschen, the emergency penny, is money put aside for purchases nobody planned. The consumer advice centers, the Verbraucherzentralen, explain it in a series for young people, Auf eigenen Füßen: Laura zieht aus, On Her Own Feet: Laura Moves Out. Laura comes of age, starts work and is responsible for everything herself for the first time. Then the washing machine suddenly breaks down, the fridge stops working, or the smartphone screen stays dark. For such cases, the advice is a buffer of two to three months’ salary. It is best kept in an overnight savings account, a Tagesgeldkonto. The money does not belong under the pillow or in the coffee tin. The centers call the amount a rule of thumb that depends on each person’s situation.
Cash That Cannot Be Hacked
The Federal Office of Civil Protection, the BBK, advises people to have cash on hand: Denken Sie daran, Bargeld zur Verfügung zu haben, remember to have cash available. The reason it gives is that cash machines also stop working in a power cut. It names no amount. In July 2025, Bundesbank board member Burkhard Balz said in an interview that cash can be decisive in a crisis, so that people can keep paying. Cash is independent of electricity, networks and digital interfaces. Bargeld lässt sich nicht hacken, he said, cash cannot be hacked.
Multiplied by 1.35
When German engineers check whether a structure will carry its loads, they do not calculate with the loads they expect. The standard DIN EN 1990, the basis of structural design, sets the factors. In the calculation, the dead loads are multiplied by 1.35 and the imposed loads by 1.5. The trade portal Baunetz Wissen explains the idea behind it with a quotient, γ. It divides the maximum load at which a part could fail by the permissible load. If γ equals 1, the safety reserve is missing. Only when γ is greater than 1 is there a calculated safety.
One Minute of Buffer
In the timetable of the German railway network, a Pufferzeit, buffer time, is a binding extra minute between two trains. It comes on top of the gap that is technically required. Deutsche Bahn says it is meant to stop delays from passing on to the following trains. It is being introduced route by route. DB also plans Joker-Gleise, joker tracks. A joker track is a platform track in a station that is kept free on purpose and may only be used when needed. The seven big hubs, Hamburg, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, Frankfurt, Mannheim and Munich, count as heavily loaded. In March 2026, a news report described the problem plainly. Because buffers are missing, delays pass on to the following trains. In February 2026, the punctuality of DB long-distance trains was 59.4 percent.
The buffer minute is being added to a network where many hubs and main lines are overloaded.
Half the Speedometer
Halber Tacho, half the speedometer, is the rule German driving schools teach for following distance. On highways and country roads, the gap to the car ahead in meters should be half the speed in kilometers per hour. At 80 km/h, that is 40 meters. Section 4 of the road traffic regulations sets the standard behind it. The distance must usually be large enough that a driver can still stop if the car ahead brakes suddenly. Learner drivers also memorize rules of thumb for stopping. The reaction distance is the speed divided by ten, times three. The braking distance is the speed divided by ten, squared. At 50 km/h, that makes 15 meters of reaction distance and 25 meters of braking distance. An emergency stop can cut the braking distance in half. At more than 100 km/h, a driver who keeps less than three tenths of the half-speedometer distance receives a fine of 160 euros, two points and a one-month driving ban.
Hänsel’s Pebbles
The Brothers Grimm first published Hänsel und Gretel in 1812. The two children are too hungry to sleep, and they hear the woman tell their father to leave them in the forest. Hänsel tells Gretel not to worry, he will help them. When the parents are asleep, he slips outside. The white pebbles in front of the house shine in the moonlight, and he fills his pockets with them. On the way into the forest, he keeps stopping and looking back. He tells his father that he is looking at his white kitten on the roof. In fact he is dropping pebbles on the path. That night the children follow the shining pebbles home. The second time, the woman has locked the door, and Hänsel cannot get out to collect pebbles. He crumbles his bread and drops the crumbs instead. The birds eat them, and the children are lost.
October to Easter
Von O bis O, from O to O, is the rule of thumb for winter tires. It means from Oktober to Ostern, from October to Easter. The law itself sets no dates. Since 2010, the road traffic regulations have required winter tires only in winter road conditions: black ice, packed snow, slush, ice or frost. A driver caught in these conditions without winter tires pays 60 euros and gets a point. The car’s owner can face 75 euros and a point as well. The popular rule covers the whole season in advance, so the tires are already on the car when the first frost comes. The automobile club ADAC adds that even this is only partly right, because wintry roads can also appear before October and after Easter, especially at higher altitudes.
The Gold in the Julius Tower
After the war of 1870 to 1871, the new German Empire created a war treasure, the Reichskriegsschatz, from French payments. It was worth 120 million gold marks. From 1874, it lay in 1,200 chests of gold coins in the Juliusturm, the Julius Tower of the citadel in Spandau. In 1913, the treasure was raised to 360 million gold marks. In 1914, at the start of the First World War, it was used for its purpose. The tower’s name came back in the 1950s. Finance Minister Fritz Schäffer held back budget surpluses for West German rearmament, and the political debate called the hoard the Juliusturm. His budget policy followed the principle of the guter Hausvater, the good father of the household. In the third quarter of 1956, the hoard reached more than seven billion marks. In the end, much of the money saved for rearmament went to social policy, above all to a pension reform that made pensions rise regularly.