der Vertrauensbruch
A breach of trust.
Porzellan zerschlagen
To smash porcelain. One causes damage in a relationship that is hard to repair.
es sich mit jemandem verscherzen
To lose someone’s goodwill through one’s own fault.
bei jemandem unten durch sein
To have lost all standing with someone.
jemandem auf die Finger schauen
To watch someone’s fingers. One checks a person’s work closely.
sich erst wieder bewähren müssen
To have to prove oneself again.
In Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche has a chapter of short sayings. Aphorism 183 reads: Nicht dass du mich belogst, sondern dass ich dir nicht mehr glaube, hat mich erschüttert. Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, is what has shaken me.
Uli Hoeneß left prison on 29 February 2016, after 637 days. He had been sentenced to three and a half years for tax evasion and was released after serving half. Before the general meeting of FC Bayern Munich, he told the Abendzeitung: Ich bin nachdenklicher und auch demütiger geworden. I have become more thoughtful and also more humble. On 25 November 2016 he asked the members: Ich bitte Sie um eine zweite Chance. I ask you for a second chance. He promised to do everything to meet their expectations. The members elected him president again with 97.7 percent of the votes.
On 27 January 2005 the referee Robert Hoyzer confessed that he had manipulated football matches for betting. On 29 April 2005 the German Football Association banned him for life. Hoyzer also named other referees. One was Felix Zwayer, who had helped bring the case to light. The association’s sports court found that Zwayer had accepted 300 euros from Hoyzer, and it banned him for six months. The verdict became known only years later. Zwayer has denied taking the money. He went on to referee at the top level, including a semifinal of the 2024 European Championship. The former referee Manuel Gräfe once said that anyone who had taken money and kept quiet about Hoyzer’s manipulation for half a year sollte keinen Profifußball pfeifen, should not referee professional football.
In 2006 a suspicion of corruption at Siemens became public. At first the reports spoke of about 20 million euros moved out of the company through shell firms. The proceedings ended in December 2008 with fines of about 1.2 billion euros. The total cost to Siemens later reached 2.2 billion euros. The fines did not end the matter. US authorities appointed Theo Waigel, a former German finance minister, as an independent Compliance Monitor. For four years he checked whether Siemens kept to rules and laws.
The ADAC is Germany’s largest automobile club. Its award, the Gelber Engel, the Yellow Angel, included a vote by members on the Lieblingsautos der Deutschen, the Germans’ favorite cars. On 14 January 2014 the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that only 3,409 members had voted for the winner, the VW Golf. The ADAC had announced 34,299. Its managing director spoke of Unterstellungen und Unwahrheiten, insinuations and untruths. A few days later the communications chief Michael Ramstetter admitted the manipulation and resigned from all his posts. In a survey published on 23 January, 47 percent said they now trusted the ADAC less than before the crisis. In December 2016, after a reform of the club, its president August Markl said that its reputation was fast wiederhergestellt, almost restored.
In 1987 Björn Engholm was the target of a smear campaign run from the office of his rival Uwe Barschel. Engholm then became minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein and chairman of the Social Democrats. By 1993 he was the favorite to become the party’s candidate for chancellor. Then it came out that he had known about Barschel’s methods earlier than he had said. He had made false statements in the late phase of the Barschel affair. On 3 May 1993 he resigned. A news portal summed it up: Der Verlust seiner Glaubwürdigkeit kostete ihn das Amt, the loss of his credibility cost him the office.
The Unification Treaty of 1990 gave public employers in the former East Germany a special ground for dismissal. Work for the Stasi could justify dismissal without notice if keeping the employee seemed unzumutbar, unreasonable to expect. On 3 April 1990 the theologian Heinrich Fink was elected rector of Humboldt University in Berlin. In November 1991 the federal commissioner for the Stasi records reported that Fink had been registered as an informant. The university dismissed him without notice. On 8 July 1997 the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the special ground is compatible with the Basic Law. Each case, it said, must be judged on its own. The more important the employee’s position, the less the employer can be expected to keep him.
Time and openness also counted in a related ground, a lack of personal fitness. On 13 September 1995 the Federal Labor Court ruled on an employee who had answered a Stasi questionnaire falsely. A deliberately false answer belegt nicht zwangsläufig, does not necessarily prove, a lack of personal fitness. It counts in the employee’s favor if the Stasi work lies far in the past. It also counts if he reported it als er noch nicht mit der Aufdeckung seiner früheren Tätigkeit für das MfS rechnen mußte, when he did not yet have to expect his past to be uncovered.
Wolfgang Schnur was a lawyer who had defended East German dissidents. In 1990 he led the new party Demokratischer Aufbruch, Democratic Awakening. Helmut Kohl campaigned with him and saw him as a possible East German prime minister. On 5 March 1990, reports came out that Schnur had worked for the Stasi as an informant. He said the files could not refer to him, and on 8 March he rejected the accusations again. Then a former Stasi officer said that Schnur had been a top informant under the cover name Dr. Schirmer. Schnur resigned in mid-March, days before the Volkskammer election of March 1990. In 1993 he lost his license to practice law. In 1996 a Berlin court convicted him.
Vera Lengsfeld was an East German civil rights activist. In 1988 she was jailed for a protest against the regime and then expelled from the country. In 1991 she learned that her husband, the poet Knud Wollenberger, had informed on her to the Stasi under the code name Donald. He had been an informant since 1972, and he went on writing reports on her during their marriage. They divorced in 1992. In 2000, when he was gravely ill, she forgave him. She later told the broadcaster Al Jazeera: “You can only forgive somebody if they are repentant.” She also said: “It took my former husband 10 years but he was repentant.”