From 1986 to 2021, the town of Haßloch in the Palatinate was a test market. The market research institute GfK, the Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung, used it to test new products for companies under real conditions, with real customers in real shops. In age structure and income distribution, the test households were a smaller copy of all households in Germany. The town was called Mini-Deutschland, Germany in miniature. About 3,000 of its roughly 10,000 households took part voluntarily. The test households had a GfK chip card that was scanned with every purchase. Boxes on the television sets measured how well TV advertising worked. Brands such as Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Wrigley tested new products there. If the people of Haßloch bought a product, it went onto supermarket shelves in the rest of the country. Products they rejected were not taken into the range. The test market ended in December 2021. GfK said it would rely more on smartphone apps, online surveys and AI-based software.
Watching Emigrants Fail
On 15 August 2006, the channel VOX broadcast the first episode of Goodbye Deutschland! Die Auswanderer, Goodbye Germany! The Emigrants. The docu-soap follows Germans who leave the country to start a new life abroad. It has now run for twenty years. In an anniversary article, the news agency dpa listed what regular viewers see when an emigration goes wrong: Grandiose Selbstüberschätzung, Einfältigkeit, gänzlich fehlende Sprachkenntnisse, ein äußerst löchriger Businessplan, grandiose self-overestimation, simple-mindedness, a complete lack of language skills, a business plan full of holes. The article went on: meist sieht man das Unheil als Zuschauer schon aus weiter Entfernung heranrauschen, as a viewer, you usually see the disaster rushing toward them from far away. One emigrant, Claudia from Swabia, wanted to move to the United States and sell teddy bears of her own design. The narrator noted that the trained bank clerk brought hardly any qualification for the new job. Claudia tried to brush the doubts aside: Ich habe mal ein Kleid für mich genäht, I once sewed a dress for myself. Then she added: Das ist nichts geworden, it didn’t turn out.
Sixteen Years in the Cellar
In September 2019, Wer wird Millionär? celebrated its twentieth anniversary. In the special show, the lawyer Jan Stroh from Hamburg answered the final question and won one million euros. Afterward, the press reported how he had got there. For almost sixteen years he had replayed the show at home, at his own quiz desk, with all the sound effects. In his cellar he had his personal heißer Stuhl, hot seat. Over the years he built a large archive of questions, some from the show and some of his own. He told Bild he had not missed a single episode. His own summary: Richtig ‚durchgelernt‘ habe ich keine Fragen. He had not really crammed any questions.
The Shopping List
In September 2020, the Federal Association of the German Food Trade, the BVLH, published a representative survey by the Forsa institute. Three out of four Germans said they think carefully before larger shopping trips about which products they will put in the cart. Among those who plan larger food purchases in advance, 84 percent use a list. By far the most common planning aid is the Einkaufszettel, a shopping list written by the shoppers themselves. One in five also uses a shopping app.
Ten Years for One Drift
On 20 September 2019, the German research icebreaker Polarstern set out on the MOSAiC expedition. The plan was to let the ship freeze into the Arctic ice and drift with it for a year. The federal government described the departure in one sentence: Nach zehn Jahren der Vorbereitung war es soweit, after ten years of preparation, the time had come. The expedition cost 140 million euros. About 600 scientists from different fields took part. Six icebreakers were to supply the ship, and a runway for supply aircraft was to be built on the ice floe. On 4 October 2019, the ship was frozen into a floe and its main engines were switched off. From then on, it moved only with the ice, inside a drift corridor that had been calculated in advance.
The Right to a Second Opinion
A German doctor who recommends certain planned operations must tell the patient about a right. It is the right to a Zweitmeinung, an independent second medical opinion from another qualified doctor. The rule is Section 27b of Book V of the Social Code, introduced in 2015. The doctor must, as a rule, give this information at least ten working days before the planned operation. For some operations the period is fifteen working days. The Federal Joint Committee decides which operations are covered. Its guideline, published at the end of 2018, named two in 2019: tonsil operations and hysterectomies. According to the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, the law responded to a rise in the number of certain elective operations that medicine could hardly explain.
Asking Before Buying the Plot
A German who wants to build a house can ask the building authority a binding question before buying the land. This is the Bauvoranfrage, the preliminary building inquiry. The answer is the Bauvorbescheid, a preliminary decision. The city of Hamburg names its use plainly: to have the buildability of a plot checked before buying it. The person asking does not need to own the plot yet. In most state building codes, the preliminary decision is valid for three years. During that time, the authority is bound by it. It does not replace the building permit, which must still be applied for.
A Year and a Half for One Exam
German law students finish their studies with the Staatsexamen, the state examination. In the exam, candidates write six or seven papers of five hours each within two weeks. The career portal e-fellows.net describes how students prepare. Many plan a year and a half, following a strict plan: eight hours of study a day, six days a week, and a practice exam every week. The study blog Jura Individuell cites an estimate that 90 percent of law students attend a commercial Repetitorium, a private cram course, at least once on the way to the exam. Even so, almost 30 percent of candidates fail their first exam, according to e-fellows.net. The exam rules also offer a Freischuss, a free shot. Its purpose is to keep students from postponing the exam out of fear.
Planning the Mountain Tour
The German Alpine Club, the Deutscher Alpenverein (DAV), has more than 1.3 million members. It keeps statistics on their mountain accidents. One category is the Blockierung, the blockage. It covers emergencies in which climbers or hikers are not hurt but must call mountain rescue, for example because they are lost or too exhausted to go on. In August 2020 the DAV wrote that blockages lassen sich durch eine präzise Selbsteinschätzung und akribische Tourenplanung relativ gut vermeiden, can be avoided quite well through precise self-assessment and meticulous tour planning. It appealed to mountaineers to prepare especially carefully for their tours and to plan defensively.
A Pandemic Rehearsed in 2007
LÜKEX is short for Länder- und Ressortübergreifende Krisenmanagementübung, a crisis management exercise across federal states and ministries. The exercises run in a two-year cycle. On Wednesday, 7 November 2007, one of them played through a pandemic. In the scenario, 27 million people in Germany fell ill within eight weeks. 307,000 were treated in hospital, and 102,000 died. Seven federal states and about 3,000 people took part. Afterward, it was said internally that the crisis staff led by the interior and health ministries hat sich strukturell und organisatorisch uneingeschränkt bewährt, had proven itself fully in structure and organization. In fact, the exercise saw severe shortages of medicines, a breakdown of medical care in some districts, staff absences in hospitals and the police, and stalled communication between decision makers.
Thirteen years later, the real pandemic arrived.