Teamwork Archives - Page 12 of 14

Words for Whose Job It Is

Dafür bin ich nicht zuständig — I am not responsible for that. It is the standard sentence for saying that a matter belongs to someone else.

Es fühlte sich niemand zuständig — nobody felt responsible. Duden gives this as an example sentence for the word.

Das ist nicht mein Bier — that is not my beer. In everyday speech it means “that is not my business.”

Das fällt in mein Ressort — that falls into my department. Duden defines a Ressort as a firmly outlined area of tasks and responsibility.

Kompetenzgerangel and Zuständigkeitsgerangel — wrangling over competence, wrangling over responsibility. Duden marks Kompetenzgerangel as colloquial and disapproving.

Zuständigkeitshalber — for reasons of responsibility. The word belongs to the German of official letters.

Article 65 of the Basic Law lets the Chancellor set the guidelines of policy. Then it says: Innerhalb dieser Richtlinien leitet jeder Bundesminister seinen Geschäftsbereich selbständig und unter eigener Verantwortung. Within these guidelines, each federal minister runs his portfolio independently and on his own responsibility. German government calls this the Ressortprinzip, the portfolio principle. When two ministers disagree, the federal government as a whole decides. The principle goes back to the Prussian reforms. They abolished the old cabinet system and created a state ministry nach dem Ressortprinzip klar gegliedert, clearly organized by portfolio. The ministers for the interior, foreign affairs, finance, justice and war each answered to the king.

The Judge Assigned in Advance

Article 101 of the Basic Law says: Niemand darf seinem gesetzlichen Richter entzogen werden. No one may be removed from his lawful judge. In practice, the presiding committee of each court distributes the cases in a plan, the Geschäftsverteilungsplan. It makes this plan before the business year begins, for the whole year. The plan may be changed during the year only for narrow reasons, such as a judge who is overloaded. The judge for a case is therefore fixed in advance by a general rule.

The Dike Master

Theodor Storm’s novella Der Schimmelreiter first appeared in April 1888. Hauke Haien becomes the Deichgraf, the official responsible for the dikes. The old dike is damaged. Ole Peters plays the danger down and the workers grumble. So Hauke does not carry out a full repair. With great pangs of conscience, he settles for patchwork. Later the dike breaks at exactly that spot. Hauke plunges with his horse into the raging water and cries: Herr Gott, nimm mich; verschon die andern! Lord God, take me, spare the others!

Claims Department M to Z

The comedy series Stromberg ran on ProSieben from 2004 to 2012. Most of it takes place in the claims department Schadensregulierung M–Z, which Bernd Stromberg runs. Claims from A to L belong to another department, Schadensregulierung A–L. Its head, Sinan Turçulu, competes with Stromberg for the management of the whole department.

Board Portfolios

Under § 77 of the German Stock Corporation Act, the members of a management board run the company together: sämtliche Vorstandsmitglieder nur gemeinschaftlich. The articles or the board’s own rules may provide otherwise, and in practice they assign portfolios to individual members. The member who holds a portfolio is then fully liable for the decisions in it.

The other members keep their part. In the words of one law firm, the principle of overall responsibility nicht durchbrochen, sondern vielmehr modifiziert, is not broken but rather modified.

Love Parade Duisburg

On July 24, 2010, 21 people died in a crowd crush at the Love Parade in Duisburg. Afterward, the city, the organizer and the police blamed one another. The head of the state police of North Rhine-Westphalia said at a press conference: Der Veranstalter und nur der Veranstalter war für die Sicherheit der Menschen auf dem Veranstaltungsgelände zuständig. The organizer, and only the organizer, was responsible for the safety of the people on the site. An interim report by lawyers commissioned by the city concluded, provisionally, that the city had not been responsible for safety on the site. The trial began on December 8, 2017, at the regional court in Duisburg. On May 4, 2020, the proceedings against the last three defendants were discontinued, partly because of the restrictions expected from the Corona crisis. The trial ended without a verdict.

Wirecard and the Gap Between Supervisors

Wirecard filed for insolvency on June 25, 2020. Three days earlier, the company itself had said that balances of 1.9 billion euros in trust accounts most probably did not exist. A committee of inquiry of the Bundestag then asked who had been responsible for supervision. The financial supervisor BaFin is responsible for banks, insurers and financial holding companies. In BaFin’s view, Wirecard was ein Unternehmen aus dem Bereich Informationstechnik und keine Finanzholding, an information technology company and not a financial holding. For money-laundering supervision of other companies, the state authorities are responsible. In Wirecard’s case, the authority in Lower Bavaria took up its responsibility only when suspicion grew. An official of the finance ministry told the committee: Wenn keine Zuständigkeit vorliegt, gibt es auch nichts zu koordinieren. Where there is no responsibility, there is nothing to coordinate.

The Captain of Köpenick

On October 16, 1906, the shoemaker Wilhelm Voigt put on a captain’s uniform and took command of a group of soldiers in Berlin. He occupied the town hall of Köpenick, arrested the mayor and took the town treasury. The Berliner Volks-Zeitung commented: Umkleide dich in Preußen-Deutschland mit einer Uniform, und du bist allmächtig. Put on a uniform in Prussian Germany, and you are all-powerful. The story made German Untertanengeist, the spirit of the obedient subject, a joke around the world. Carl Zuckmayer turned it into a play, which premiered at the Deutsches Theater Berlin on March 5, 1931. Heinrich Mann gave the same type a name in his novel Der Untertan, finished in 1914. Kurt Tucholsky described its hero in two phrases. He beugt sich nach oben, bows to those above, and he tritt nach unten, kicks those below.

Words for saying it plainly

Klartext reden — to speak plain text. Klartext is also a message that is not encrypted, so that anyone can read it.

Tacheles reden — to talk tachles, a word that came into German from Yiddish. Duden defines it as saying your opinion openly, without false consideration.

Butter bei die Fische! — butter with the fish! It is a regional call to stop holding back and settle the matter now.

Ross und Reiter nennen — to name the horse and the rider. You say openly whom and what you mean.

Um den heißen Brei herumreden — to talk around the hot porridge. It is a complaint about someone who does not dare to raise the real point.

Das geht gar nicht — that does not work at all. It is the everyday verdict on something that is plainly unacceptable.