In 1968 the philosopher Hans Albert published his Traktat über kritische Vernunft, Treatise on Critical Reason. In it he argued that every attempt to justify a claim with final certainty ends in one of three ways. The justification goes on without end, or it runs in a circle, or it simply stops at some point. He called this the Münchhausen trilemma, after the baron who claimed he had pulled himself out of a swamp by his own hair. Breaking off the chain of justification, Albert argued, amounts to an appeal to a dogma. German Wikipedia sums up its purpose: um den Behauptungen das Risiko des Scheiterns an möglichen Einwänden zu nehmen, to protect claims from the risk of failing in the face of possible objections. Since reason can err, theories must be exposed to criticism again and again. Albert was a leading voice of critical rationalism in Germany. In Germany, its best-known declared follower in politics was former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
books
Three Books on How to Play
Within four years, three German musicians wrote down how to play their instruments. Johann Joachim Quantz published his method for the flute in Berlin in 1752. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach published his Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, in Berlin in 1753. Leopold Mozart published his Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, a thorough violin method, in Augsburg in 1756. In 1829 the composer Carl Friedrich Zelter wrote that Mozart’s method could be used solange die Violine eine Violine bleibt, as long as the violin remains a violin. Together, the three books are today the most important source on how music was performed in the middle of the 18th century.
Gymnastics Written Down
On 19 June 1811 Friedrich Ludwig Jahn began public gymnastics in Berlin. This counts as the birth of the German gymnastics movement, Turnen. Jahn introduced many pieces of apparatus, among them the horizontal bar and the parallel bars. In 1816 he published, with Ernst Eiselen, Die deutsche Turnkunst, zur Einrichtung der Turnplätze dargestellt, German gymnastics, set out for the establishment of gymnastics grounds. According to German Wikipedia, the book came from practice for practice. It contains a model description of a gymnastics ground and its apparatus, the exercises, and the order and laws of gymnastics, down to the conduct and dress of gymnasts and teachers.
Recipes Tested, Then Printed
The Dr. Oetker Schulkochbuch, the school cookbook, was written in 1910 by Emilie Henneking, a home economics teacher in Bielefeld. It first appeared in 1911. Her aim was to pass knowledge on to the next generations. By 1927 it was already the standard work in millions of households and in cooking schools. The edition of 2018 contains 455 recipes. They were developed in the Dr. Oetker test kitchen and tested under different household conditions. More than 19 million copies have been sold.
Measured Art
In 1525, Albrecht Dürer published in Nuremberg his Underweysung der messung mit dem zirckel und richtscheyt, instruction in measurement with compass and ruler. It was the first comprehensive textbook of geometry in the German language, written for painters and craftsmen. His Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion, four books on human proportion, were printed in October 1528, five months after his death. The third book shows how the proportions of the human figure change according to mathematical rules.
The Neufert
Ernst Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre, the theory of building design, first appeared in Berlin in 1936. It has been translated into 18 languages, and a 41st edition appeared in 2016. The Neue Deutsche Biographie says that to this day der Neufert is the standard work for every architecture student.
Gut Decisions
In 2007 the psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer published Bauchentscheidungen, gut decisions. He is director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. The subtitle is Die Intelligenz des Unbewussten und die Macht der Intuition, the intelligence of the unconscious and the power of intuition. Gigerenzer argues that people make most decisions intuitively, by rules of thumb. In his view, following such gut decisions is itself a rational strategy, and good intuitions must ignore information. The magazine Bild der Wissenschaft gave the book its science book award.
The book does not praise haste. Gigerenzer separates a gut feeling from a random idea or from naivety.
Communicative and Strategic Action
In 1981 the philosopher Jürgen Habermas published Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, The Theory of Communicative Action. The book separates two kinds of social action. In strategisches Handeln, strategic action, each person is oriented only toward his own success. In kommunikatives Handeln, communicative action, people try to reach Verständigung, a shared understanding. Habermas wrote: Im kommunikativen Handeln sind die Beteiligten nicht primär am eigenen Erfolg orientiert. In communicative action, the participants are not primarily oriented toward their own success. They still pursue their own goals. But they do so on the condition that they can align their plans with each other.
Leisure and Worship
In September 1947, the philosopher Josef Pieper wrote a short book in three weeks. It appeared in Munich in 1948 as Muße und Kult, Leisure and Worship. Its first chapter takes up the theme Der Anspruch der totalen Arbeitswelt, the claim of the world of total work. Muße is a more elevated word for leisure than the everyday Freizeit, free time. The English edition of 1952 appeared as Leisure, the Basis of Culture, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot.
Little Man, What Now?
Hans Fallada’s novel Kleiner Mann – was nun?, Little Man, What Now?, appeared in 1932. Its hero, the bookkeeper Johannes Pinneberg, loses his job. He finds work in a department store and loses that job too, after only a year. He is behind on his sales quota. Fallada described his hero as einer von sechs Millionen, ein Garnichts, one of six million, a nothing. The book became a bestseller and went through 45 editions. It was filmed in Germany in 1933 and in Hollywood in 1934.