In April 2020, few scientists in Germany were listened to as closely as the virologist Christian Drosten. On 27 April, the news site t-online published an opinion piece listing reasons why he had become a hero against his will. Point five read: Er überschreitet seine Kompetenzen nicht. He does not overstep his competence. The author explained that, as Drosten kept saying, science makes no political decisions and has no democratic mandate. Drosten wird nicht müde, das zu betonen, und hält sich daran. Drosten never tires of stressing this, and he keeps to it. Wenn er etwas nicht beurteilen kann, dann scheut er sich nicht, das zuzugeben. When he cannot judge something, he is not afraid to say so.
Words for Empty Talk
Schaumschläger
Froth-beater, also the word for a whisk. Duden defines it as a person who pretends to qualities or abilities that he does not have, especially from a need for recognition.
Blender
Dazzler. Someone who wins people over with outward advantages and so hides his weaknesses.
Phrasendrescher
Phrase-thresher. Someone who makes speeches that sound fine but say nothing.
Wichtigtuer
Someone who makes himself important.
Selbstdarsteller
Self-presenter. Someone whose actions serve to display himself.
Heiße Luft
Hot air. Das ist doch nur heiße Luft. That is only hot air.
Angeber, Großmaul
Show-off, bigmouth.
Something to Show
Jürgen Klinsmann came to FC Bayern Munich in 2008 with new concepts and ideas. On 27 April 2009, before the end of his first season, the club let him go. Jupp Heynckes, who had coached Bayern before, took over for the last five matches. Uli Hoeneß, the club’s general manager, explained the choice: Wir brauchen jetzt jemanden, der schon etwas vorzuweisen hat. We now need someone who already has something to show. He added: Jedes Konzept liest sich prima auf dem Papier. Every concept reads well on paper.
The Missed Train
Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung, The Metamorphosis, published in 1915, begins with Gregor Samsa waking up as a giant insect. His first worry is not his body. It is the clock. Es war halb sieben Uhr, und die Zeiger gingen ruhig vorwärts. It was half past six, and the hands were moving calmly on. His train had left at five, and the next one would leave at seven. Gregor thinks of his firm, which suspects the worst at the smallest failure. Then the firm’s chief clerk arrives at the apartment in person. He tells Gregor through the door: Und Ihre Stellung ist durchaus nicht die festeste. And your position is by no means the most secure. In five years of service, Gregor had not once been ill.
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.
In Their Own Responsibility
The school law of North Rhine-Westphalia describes the teacher’s freedom and its frame in one sentence. Teachers teach, educate, advise, assess and supervise their students in eigener Verantwortung, on their own responsibility, im Rahmen, within the framework, of the educational goals, the applicable laws and regulations, the orders of the school authorities and the decisions of the school’s conferences. In Hesse, the principal may intervene in the teaching of a fully trained teacher only when a rule has been broken. After the shock of the first PISA study in 2000, the states committed to applying national educational standards from the 2004–05 school year. The standards fix what students must be able to do at the end. They are meant to give schools and teachers greater freedom in choosing and arranging the content.
Trust-Based Working Time
About one in five employees in Germany works under Vertrauensarbeitszeit, working time based on trust. What counts is that agreed tasks are done, not that the employee is present. The employee organizes his own hours and records them himself. The employer remains responsible for compliance with the legal limits on working time. On 14 May 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that employers must record daily working time. The employers’ association Gesamtmetall called trust-based working time praktisch tot, practically dead. On 13 September 2022, the Federal Labor Court ruled that this duty applies to German employers unmittelbar und sofort, directly and immediately.
Black on White
In Goethe’s Faust I, a new student comes to ask for advice. Mephisto, dressed as Faust, tells him to take careful notes in lectures, as if the Holy Spirit were dictating. The student answers: Das sollt Ihr mir nicht zweimal sagen! / Ich denke mir, wie viel es nützt / Denn, was man schwarz auf weiß besitzt, / Kann man getrost nach Hause tragen. (You need not tell me twice! I can see how useful it is. For what you have in black and white, you can carry home with confidence.) Schwarz auf weiß, in black and white, is still a common phrase for in writing, in a form that counts as proof and leaves no room for doubt.
The Coalition Agreement
A German coalition agreement cannot be enforced in court. The first one in the Federal Republic, in 1961, had fewer than ten pages. The agreement of 2018 had 175 pages, and the one of 2021 had 177. On 5 May 2025, CDU, CSU and SPD signed their agreement of 144 pages in Berlin. Before that, the SPD had put it to a vote of its members, and 84.6 percent of those who voted approved. In October 2025, the coalition argued about a pension package. The SPD leader Lars Klingbeil said that Labor Minister Bärbel Bas had implemented was im Koalitionsvertrag steht, what is in the coalition agreement. He said it was the job of the CDU/CSU group leader to make sure dass seine Fraktion das verabredete Paket mitträgt, that his group supports the agreed package. The Bundestag passed it on 5 December 2025.