Vorsicht, Falle! – Nepper, Schlepper, Bauernfänger (Watch out, trap! Swindlers, touts and con men) is a ZDF program about fraud. Eduard Zimmermann, who also created Aktenzeichen XY, first put it on the air in 1964. He presented 180 episodes until 1997. His daughter Sabine presented it until 2001. The program showed viewers the tricks that fraudsters use on trusting people. In November 2018, ZDF brought it back with Rudi Cerne as presenter. The fraudsters had changed. In the past they were Nepper, Schlepper und Bauernfänger. Now they are false police officers and online criminals. Cerne described the aim of the program: Wir versuchen mit unserem Format, die Sinne zu schärfen. With our format, we try to sharpen the senses.
Death Notices on the Autobahn
Since 2008, drivers on the German Autobahn have passed large posters from the campaign Runter vom Gas!, Take your foot off the gas! The Federal Ministry of Transport and the German Road Safety Council run it together. The first posters showed fictional death notices, with a photo and lines such as Fuhren gerne sportlich, liked to drive sportily, and Zu schnell in die Kurve, too fast into the bend. In early 2009, the ministry and the council presented three new motifs. They showed car wrecks with the stickers “Baby an Bord” and “Abi 2008”, the school-leaving year, and a crashed motorcycle with a “Just Married!” balloon still tied to it. Tiefensee said: Die Plakate zeigen eindrucksvoll, wozu Raserei und mangelnde Rücksicht im Verkehr führen. The posters show powerfully what speeding and a lack of consideration in traffic lead to. Today the posters stand at more than 700 sites along the motorways and at rest stops, and the motifs change every year.
The Cloud
Shortly after the Chernobyl disaster, Gudrun Pausewang wrote Die Wolke, The Cloud. The novel appeared in 1987. It describes the consequences of a possible reactor accident in Germany, told through the fate of a 14-year-old girl. In 1988 it won the German Youth Literature Prize. It has sold more than a million copies, it is read in schools, and it was made into a film. After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Pausewang explained her purpose. Ich wollte warnen. I wanted to warn. Natürlich kann Warnung Angst wecken. Aber man sollte die Angst nicht so verteufeln. Sie wurde uns von der Natur mitgegeben als Hilfe zum Überleben. Of course a warning can awaken fear. But one should not demonize fear so much. Nature gave it to us as a help for survival.
Warnings Before the Ahr Flood
In mid-July 2021, a flood in the Ahr valley killed 134 people. Warnings had gone out days earlier. The European Flood Awareness System, EFAS, said its forecasts showed a “high” probability of flooding in the Rhine area as early as 9 and 10 July. From 10 to 14 July, it sent more than 25 warnings for parts of the Rhine and Meuse basins to the national authorities. A meteorologist of the German Weather Service said its models had captured the rainfall well days ahead, and that the first pre-warnings went out three days in advance. On the afternoon of 14 July, the state environment office forecast a level at the Ahr well above the previous record of 3.7 meters. Around 9:30 p.m., it named an expected level of almost seven meters. The municipality of Altenahr had asked the district early to raise the disaster alarm. The district first refused and pointed to data that still had to be checked. It declared the disaster only around 11 p.m. and ordered the evacuation of buildings within 50 meters of the river.
A survey by the University of Potsdam later asked 1,315 people affected by the floods. In Rhineland-Palatinate, 29 percent said they had received no warning at all. Of all respondents who had been warned, 85 percent had not expected very severe flooding. The researcher Annegret Thieken said: Ein großes Problem bestand darin, dass die Warnmeldungen das Ausmaß der Flut nicht ausreichend widerspiegelten. A major problem was that the warnings did not reflect the scale of the flood well enough.
The Warning Treated as an Attack
In early 2019, the Financial Times published articles on the payments company Wirecard. They accused a Wirecard employee of manipulating accounts and forging documents. In February 2019, the financial supervisor BaFin banned new short positions in Wirecard shares for two months. The Munich prosecutors opened an investigation into a journalist of the Financial Times on suspicion of share price manipulation, after a complaint from an investor. In 2019 BaFin also filed a criminal complaint on suspicion of market manipulation. In June 2020, Wirecard filed for insolvency. It had admitted that 1.9 billion euros in trust accounts probably did not exist. In September 2020, the prosecutors closed the case against the two journalists, Dan McCrum and Stefania Palma. They said the reporting had been “fundamentally accurate”.
The Blue Letter
When a German pupil may have to repeat a school year, the parents get a written warning. It is known as der blaue Brief, the blue letter. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the school law sets out the duty. If a pupil’s promotion is at risk because the work in a subject is no longer good enough, so sind die Eltern schriftlich zu benachrichtigen, the parents must be told in writing. The school must also point out any special consequences of not being promoted. Depending on the state, the letter must arrive about eight to ten weeks before the last day of classes. A school that does not warn pays a price. In North Rhine-Westphalia, a weak subject that should have been warned about and was not is left out of the promotion decision.
Paulinchen and the Cats
Der Struwwelpeter is a German children’s book of short warning stories in rhyme. Heinrich Hoffmann, a Frankfurt doctor, wrote it as a Christmas present for his three-year-old son. It first appeared in 1845. The first printing was 1,500 copies, and the 100th edition came out in 1876. One story is Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug, the very sad story of the matches. Paulinchen is home alone and finds the matches. Her two cats, Minz and Maunz, raise their paws and warn her. Der Vater hat’s verboten! … Laß stehn! Sonst brennst Du lichterloh! Father has forbidden it! Leave it! Or you will burn up in flames! Paulinchen does not listen. The cats warn a second time. Then her dress catches fire. At the end, only a small pile of ashes and her two pretty shoes are left, and the cats sit and cry.
“It Is Serious”
On 18 March 2020, Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to the country on television about the coronavirus. She did not soften the message. Es ist ernst. Nehmen Sie es auch ernst. It is serious. Take it seriously too. She also said: Die nächsten Wochen werden noch schwerer. The next weeks will be even harder. The rhetoric department of the University of Tübingen named it the speech of the year 2020. On 9 December 2020, in the Bundestag, she backed a call by the national academy of sciences, the Leopoldina, for a hard lockdown over the holidays. She said that if there were too many contacts before Christmas und es anschließend das letzte Weihnachten mit den Großeltern war, dann werden wir etwas versäumt haben, and it then turned out to be the last Christmas with the grandparents, we will have failed to do something.
Told Before Treatment
Before an operation in Germany, the patient sits down with a doctor for an Aufklärungsgespräch, a talk that explains the procedure. The patient also signs a form and gets a copy. The Civil Code has required this since 2013. The doctor must explain Art, Umfang, Durchführung, zu erwartende Folgen und Risiken der Maßnahme: its nature, scope, performance, expected consequences and risks. The doctor must also cover its necessity, urgency, suitability and chances of success. If several equally suitable methods carry clearly different risks, the doctor must name the alternatives. The talk must be oral. Written papers may only add to it. It must come early enough dass der Patient seine Entscheidung über die Einwilligung wohlüberlegt treffen kann, so that the patient can make a well-considered decision about consent. It must also be für den Patienten verständlich, understandable to the patient.
Fit for War
On 29 October 2023, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius spoke on the ZDF program Berlin direkt. Wir müssen uns wieder an den Gedanken gewöhnen, dass die Gefahr eines Krieges in Europa drohen könnte. We must get used again to the thought that the danger of a war in Europe could threaten. Then he said: Wir müssen kriegstüchtig werden. We must become fit for war. The word kriegstüchtig set off a long debate. The journalist Heribert Prantl called it false and dangerous. The historian Sönke Neitzel noted that most politicians said they understood what Pistorius meant but did not want to say it that way. The military had already used the term. The Inspector General, Carsten Breuer, had used it often since March 2023. Neitzel concluded: Die Politik hinkte dem öffentlichen Diskurs semantisch hinterher. In its words, politics lagged behind the public debate.