A federal law of July 2011 changed the Federal Immission Control Act. Since then, noise from daycare centers, playgrounds and similar places is, as a rule, not a harmful environmental effect. Noise limits may not be applied to it.
The quiet that the law protects for everyone makes room for children.
Germany’s ordinary courts once had Gerichtsferien, court holidays, from 15 July to 15 September. In June 1996 the Bundestag’s legal committee recommended a bill to abolish them. The bill came from the Bundesrat. It argued that the courts’ work could then be spread more evenly over the year. In their place came an individual right. Under Section 227 of the Code of Civil Procedure, a hearing set for 1 July to 31 August must be moved if a party asks within a week of the summons. Urgent matters and some other types of case are excepted.
The shared summer pause became a right that each party can claim for itself.
die Sommerpause — the summer break. The Bundestag holds no sessions, as a rule in July and August.
das Sommerloch — the summer hole. The quiet season in the news while politics is on holiday.
die Winterpause — the winter break of the Bundesliga.
zwischen den Jahren — between the years. The days between Christmas and New Year.
der Ruhetag — the rest day. A restaurant sign reads Montag Ruhetag, closed on Mondays.
In a Forsa survey of 1,400 doctors in private practice, published in December 2018, only 20 percent of practices held office hours on Wednesday between 2 and 5 p.m. Most practices were also closed on Friday afternoon. The health insurers, who commissioned the survey, used the figures to call for longer opening hours.
Under Section 3b of the Income Tax Act, extra pay for work at protected times is tax-free up to set rates of the base wage. For night work the limit is 25 percent, or 40 percent between midnight and 4 a.m. if the work began before midnight. For Sunday work it is 50 percent. For public holidays, and for 31 December from 2 p.m., it is 125 percent. The highest rate, 150 percent, applies to 24 December from 2 p.m., to 25 and 26 December, and to 1 May.
Germany staggers school summer holidays across its states. In 2026 Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg started last. With their start, all states were on summer holiday at the same time. The automobile club ADAC expected that weekend, 31 July to 2 August, to be the busiest of the whole holiday season on the roads.
In Bavaria, the Assumption of Mary on 15 August is a public holiday only in municipalities with a mainly Catholic population. The state statistics office decides which these are, on the basis of the latest census. In April 2025 the Bavarian State Office for Statistics informed the town of Tirschenreuth that, on the basis of the 2022 census, the day remains a holiday there from 2025. In 2019 the newspaper Abendzeitung counted 1,704 of the 2,056 Bavarian municipalities, among them Munich and Augsburg.
Augsburg has celebrated the Hohes Friedensfest, the High Peace Festival, every year on 8 August since 1650. It began as a Protestant celebration after the Thirty Years’ War. Since 1950 it has been a public holiday, but only within the city of Augsburg.
When 24 December falls on a working day, Monday to Saturday, shops in Germany may open only until 2 p.m. In 2017, Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday. Several states let some shops open for a few hours that morning, and all of them had to close by 2 p.m. Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate kept supermarkets closed that day.
From 1 July to 31 August, trucks over 7.5 tonnes may not use certain autobahns and federal highways on Saturdays between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. Trucks with trailers are covered whatever their weight. The rule is the Ferienreiseverordnung, the Holiday Travel Ordinance. Its stated purpose is to protect holiday traffic.