On 21 October 1997 the new Mercedes A-Class tipped over in a swerving test by a Swedish car magazine. Daimler-Benz stopped deliveries at once. It resumed them in February 1998, with electronic stability control fitted as standard, and it retrofitted the cars already sold. According to a report by the news agency dpa, fitting stability control as standard cost about 100 million marks a year. The reputation of the A-Class was damaged at first. The campaign that followed quoted the tennis player Boris Becker: Stark ist, wer keine Fehler macht. Stärker, wer aus seinen Fehlern lernt. (Strong is the one who makes no mistakes. Stronger is the one who learns from his mistakes.) Stability control later became standard in all Mercedes models.
Instead, We Kept Silent
The sleeping pill Contergan was sold in Germany from 1 October 1957 to 27 November 1961. Under the drug law of the time, a manufacturer only had to register a new medicine. In 1961 the Hamburg doctor Widukind Lenz and others linked Contergan to severe malformations in newborn children. Other sources speak of about 4,000 affected children in Germany. After the scandal, Germany rewrote its drug law. The new law came into force at the start of 1978. Since then a medicine may be approved only after proof of its quality, its efficacy and its safety. The manufacturer, Grünenthal, apologized only in August 2012, at the unveiling of a memorial in its home town of Stolberg. Its managing director Harald Stock asked forgiveness that for 50 years the company had not found its way to the victims von Mensch zu Mensch, from person to person. Stattdessen haben wir geschwiegen. (Instead, we kept silent.) Victims’ associations criticized that the apology spoke only about the company’s lack of communication.
When the Neuer Markt Closed
On 10 March 1997 Frankfurt opened the Neuer Markt, a stock market segment for young growth companies. Its index peaked on 10 March 2000. In the following 31 months it lost more than 96 percent of its value, over 200 billion euros. Some companies had published misleading figures. The segment was closed on 5 June 2003. Ten years after its start, the magazine Computerwoche wrote that many shareholders remembered it mit Grausen, with horror. The crash had shaken many investors’ trust in shares for good, and many still kept their hands off them. According to the German Shares Institute, the number of shareholders in Germany had fallen by 2.5 million since 2000.
Sunday at Noon
Every Sunday around noon, six journalists from different countries discussed politics with Werner Höfer in the Internationaler Frühschoppen, the international morning drink. The program began on radio in 1952 and moved to television in 1953. Until 1970 it started at 11:30. When it was moved to 12:00, viewers protested, above all women. The series reached 1,874 broadcasts. It ended suddenly in 1987. It had emerged that in 1943 Höfer had written approvingly of the execution of the pianist Karlrobert Kreiten, and he was forced out. Just one week later, an almost identical program, the Presseclub, started in the same slot.
The Hair Sample
In 2000 it was agreed that Christoph Daum, coach of Bayer Leverkusen, would become national coach in the summer of 2001. On 1 October 2000, the Bayern manager Uli Hoeneß hinted in a newspaper that Daum used drugs. On 9 October Daum gave a hair sample of his own accord. Ich tue das, weil ich ein absolut reines Gewissen habe. I am doing this because I have an absolutely clear conscience. On 20 October he was told the result from the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the University of Cologne. It showed cocaine. Leverkusen dismissed him without notice, and Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder, then acting head of the DFB, declared: Der Handschlag-Vertrag mit Daum ist gegenstandslos. The handshake contract with Daum is void.
Unreliable in the Eyes of the Law
German law tests the reliability of a person. Under Section 35 of the Trade Regulation Act, the authorities must ban a trader from running a business when facts show that the trader is unreliable and the ban is needed to protect the public or employees. The Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Frankfurt explains the meaning. A person is unreliable who, judged by the overall picture of his conduct, offers no assurance that he will run the business properly in the future. Typical reasons are unpaid taxes and unpaid social insurance contributions. The ban can be lifted only when facts justify the assumption that the unreliability no longer exists. The Weapons Act uses the same word. A person convicted of certain crimes lacks the necessary reliability until ten years after the last conviction became final.
Too Often He Broke My Trust
On 6 November 2024, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that he would ask the Federal President to dismiss his finance minister, Christian Lindner. “Zu oft hat er mein Vertrauen gebrochen,” Scholz said. Too often he broke my trust. “Es gibt keine Vertrauensbasis für die weitere Zusammenarbeit.” There is no basis of trust for further cooperation.
The Member of Parliament Without a Degree
Petra Hinz had been a Social Democratic member of the Bundestag since 2005. In July 2016 it became known that she had neither the Abitur nor a law degree, and so had passed no state law exams. She announced her resignation on 20 July 2016 and left the Bundestag at the end of August. The prosecutors in Essen found no initial suspicion of a crime and opened no investigation.
Prosecutors saw no crime in the false claims. They still ended her career in parliament within weeks.
Reopening a Promise
Before the federal election of February 2025, the CDU and CSU promised in their program: Wir halten an der Schuldenbremse des Grundgesetzes fest. We are holding to the debt brake of the Basic Law. A month after the election, the party leader Friedrich Merz, not yet chancellor, led a reform of the debt brake through the outgoing Bundestag. It passed on 18 March 2025. In the ZDF Politbarometer poll that week, 73 percent of respondents said that the Union and Merz had deceived the voters. Among the Union’s own supporters, 44 percent said so.
Word Broken in Hesse
Before the Hesse state election of January 2008, the SPD leader Andrea Ypsilanti ruled out working with the Left Party. Es gibt keine irgendwie geartete Zusammenarbeit mit den Linken. There will be no cooperation of any kind with the Left. After the election, she planned to become premier with the Left Party’s support. In March 2008, she dropped the plan after three days, because one of her own members, Dagmar Metzger, refused to go along. In the autumn she tried again. On 3 November 2008, the day before the vote, four SPD members announced that they would not elect her. The vote was called off. The word used against Ypsilanti was Wortbruch, breach of one’s word. After her party lost heavily in the new election of January 2009, she stepped down as party leader and as leader of the parliamentary group.