In August 2025 the coalition of CDU, CSU and SPD was quarreling. Jens Spahn, leader of the Union’s parliamentary group, told the magazine Focus that the members should also meet outside regular politics. He suggested einen gemeinsamen Abend, quasi als Teambuilding-Maßnahme, a joint evening, more or less as a teambuilding measure. His SPD counterpart, Matthias Miersch, said: Wir versuchen, miteinander eine gute Vertrauensbasis aufzubauen. We are trying to build a good basis of trust together. Spahn stressed that trust needs time.
Words for Closeness That Comes Too Soon
sich anbiedern
To curry favor by acting overly familiar.
plumpe Vertraulichkeit
Crude familiarity.
distanzlos
Without distance. It is said of a person who comes too close.
aufdringlich
Pushy, intrusive.
jemandem zu nahe treten
To step too close to someone. It means to offend him.
jemandem auf die Pelle rücken
To move onto someone’s skin. It means to crowd him.
One Notices the Intention
In the second act of Goethe’s play Torquato Tasso, the poet Tasso speaks to the princess about her friend Leonore Sanvitale. Leonore can seem very charming, he says, but he could seldom be fully open with her. Und wenn sie auch / Die Absicht hat, den Freunden wohl zu tun, / So fühlt man Absicht, und man ist verstimmt. And even when she means to do her friends good, one feels the intention, and one is put out. The line became a common German saying in a shorter form. Man merkt die Absicht und ist verstimmt. One notices the intention and is annoyed. Germans use it when friendliness seems to serve a purpose.
When a Friendship Disqualifies a Judge
Under Section 42 of the German Code of Civil Procedure, a party may reject a judge for Besorgnis der Befangenheit, fear of bias. A reason is enough if it is geeignet ist, Misstrauen gegen die Unparteilichkeit eines Richters zu rechtfertigen, suitable to justify distrust of the judge’s impartiality. In November 2020 the Federal Court of Justice decided such a case. Neighbors in a condominium were in a dispute over a parking space. The wife of the presiding judge had been friends with one of the defendants for years. The court found the challenge to the judge justified. A mere acquaintance or a loose friendship, it said, is as a rule not enough. Anders ist es aber bei einer engen bzw. langjährigen Freundschaft. It is different with a close or long-standing friendship. This holds whether or not the judge himself has contact with the party.
Neighbors in Sie
Since 2002 the broadcaster WDR has produced a Tatort set in Münster. Its two investigators are the police detective Frank Thiel and the forensic pathologist Karl-Friedrich Boerne. Thiel rents an apartment in Boerne’s building, so the two men are also neighbors. They solve murders together, they mock each other, and they say Sie to each other. In their 20th case, broadcast in September 2011, they drink to brotherhood and say du for one evening. The next morning they wake up with a hangover, and they are back to Sie. Before the broadcast, an interviewer asked the actor Axel Prahl whether the two would ever say du for good. Prahl answered: Keinesfalls! Not at all! The Münster episode Fangschuss had about 14.6 million viewers in 2017.
The Porcupines
In 1851 Arthur Schopenhauer published Parerga und Paralipomena. In the second volume he tells a parable. Eine Gesellschaft Stachelschweine drängte sich, an einem kalten Wintertage, recht nahe zusammen. A group of porcupines pressed close together on a cold winter day. They wanted to warm each other, but their quills hurt. So they moved apart, then together again, until they found a distance they could bear. Schopenhauer applies this to people. The need for company drives them together, and their unpleasant qualities push them apart. Die mittlere Entfernung, die sie endlich herausfinden, the middle distance that they finally find, is die Höflichkeit und feine Sitte, politeness and good manners. A person with much eigene, innere Wärme, inner warmth of his own, prefers to stay away from society.
The Matter Comes First
The German psychologist Sylvia Schroll-Machl describes Sachorientierung, orientation toward the matter, as a German cultural standard. In 2004, in a box headed Wir Deutschen, we Germans, she wrote: Die Sache ist uns wichtiger als die Person. The matter is more important to us than the person. Wir können durchaus mit jemandem auf sachlicher Ebene zusammenarbeiten, obwohl wir uns persönlich nicht besonders mögen. We can certainly work with someone on a factual level, even though we do not particularly like each other personally. In the same series she warns that thinking this alone is enough for working together is der häufigste deutsche Irrtum, the most common German mistake.
Do Not Talk Too Much About Yourself
Adolph Freiherr Knigge’s Über den Umgang mit Menschen, on dealing with people, first appeared in 1788. Knigge advises: Rede also nicht zu viel von Dir selber, außer in dem Zirkel Deiner vertrautesten Freunde. So do not talk too much about yourself, except in the circle of your most trusted friends. He gives two reasons for not being too open with people. The first is the fear of revealing one’s weakness and being misused. The second is that once people are used to being told everything, they zuletzt von jedem unsrer kleinsten Schritte Rechenschaft verlangen, end up demanding an account of our smallest steps.
The Vocabulary of On and Off Duty
dienstlich oder privat? — official or private?
als Privatperson — as a private individual
der Dienstschluss — the official end of the working day
die Amtsperson — a person acting in an official capacity
Das ist meine Privatsache. — That is my private business.
das Diensthandy, der Dienstwagen — the work phone, the company car
die Funkstille — radio silence