Germany, Trust, Lanes - understand-culture

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.

The Harzburger Modell was taught at the Akademie für Führungskräfte der Wirtschaft in Bad Harzburg, founded on March 26, 1956, by Reinhard Höhn. Its motto was Führung durch Delegation, leadership by delegation. Responsibility was delegated to the level of the hierarchy that held the authority to decide. Each employee’s area of tasks was in Stellenbeschreibungen fest umrissen, firmly outlined in a job description. By Höhn’s death in 2000, about 600,000 managers and junior managers had been trained at the academy. From around 1972, American management systems gained ground and the model lost importance. Critics said it favored an authoritarian and bureaucratic style. Höhn was a former SS-Oberführer, and his prominent role in the Third Reich also damaged the model once it became known.

The specialist department

German organisations give the technically competent function authority over how its work is done, and the phrase das ist Sache der Fachabteilung — that is the specialist department’s affair — settles a question by naming who owns it.

Cobbler, stay with your lasts

Cobbler, stay with your lasts.

The story is from Pliny the Elder. A shoemaker criticized the sandal in a painting by Apelles, and the painter corrected it. When the cobbler went on to criticize the leg, the painter told him to stop.

The German use of the phrase is not an instruction in modesty. It asserts the opposite of what it appears to say: within your last, your judgment outranks anyone’s.

Telegraph as Threat

„The most unfortunate officer in the field, is the one who is distracted by headquarters with daily, even hourly requests for reports on his strategy, tactics and intentions, quite often from an overly self-important junior staff officer with access to a telegraph line.“ General Helmuth von Moltke, Head of the Prussian General Staff