In August 2011 Philipp Lahm, captain of the German national team, published a book, Der feine Unterschied (The Fine Difference). In it he judged Jürgen Klinsmann’s season as coach of Bayern Munich. Under Klinsmann, he wrote, the team did essentially only fitness training, with very little tactical discussion. The players had to meet before games to discuss how they wanted to play at all. After about eight weeks, all the players knew it would not work. National coach Joachim Löw objected that a player was publicly judging coaches who had long been successful. The German Football Association reprimanded Lahm.
books
How It Actually Was
In 1824 Leopold von Ranke published a history of the Romance and Germanic peoples from 1494 to 1514. In the preface he wrote that history had been given the office of judging the past and teaching the present. His book did not claim such high offices. “[E]r will blos zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen.” It only wants to show how it actually was. He also named his material: memoirs, diaries, letters, the reports of ambassadors and the original accounts of eyewitnesses.
Thirty Years, No Cost
In 1968 the sociologist Niklas Luhmann was appointed to a chair of sociology at the new University of Bielefeld. At the end of the 1960s he was asked there to name his research project. He wrote: “Theorie der Gesellschaft; Laufzeit: 30 Jahre; Kosten: keine.” Theory of society. Duration: 30 years. Cost: none. His main tool was a Zettelkasten, a card index he had kept since the 1950s. It grew to about 90,000 notes. His Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, The Society of Society, appeared in 1997, shortly before his death.
Zettel’s Dream
Arno Schmidt wrote Zettel’s Traum from 1963 to 1969. It appeared in 1970 as a facsimile of his typescript, 1,334 large pages written by typewriter and by hand. The title alludes, among other things, to the weaver Zettel, known in English as Bottom, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In German, Zettel also means a slip of paper.
Only the Thorough Is Truly Entertaining
Thomas Mann began writing Der Zauberberg, The Magic Mountain, in 1913. He first planned a short novella. The novel appeared in 1924, in two volumes. In its foreword, the narrator announces how he will tell the story. “Wir werden sie ausführlich erzählen, genau und gründlich.” We will tell it in detail, precisely and thoroughly. He rejects the idea that a story is boring because it is long. He leans rather to the view “daß nur das Gründliche wahrhaft unterhaltend sei,” that only what is thorough is truly entertaining. He warns that the seven days of a week will not be enough to tell it.
The Last Trick
Around 1830, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote a short manuscript on the tricks people use to win arguments. It was found among his papers and is known as Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten, The Art of Being Right. The last trick reads: Wenn man merkt, daß der Gegner überlegen ist und man Unrecht behalten wird, so werde man persönlich, beleidigend, grob. When you notice that your opponent is superior and you are going to lose, become personal, insulting and rude. Schopenhauer explains that this means leaving the matter and attacking the person. He calls it an appeal from the powers of the mind to those of the body, or to the animal. His remedy is great composure.
The Smallest Common Reality
In March 2021, the chemist and science journalist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim published Die kleinste gemeinsame Wirklichkeit, The Smallest Common Reality. The subtitle is Wahr, falsch, plausibel? Die größten Streitfragen wissenschaftlich geprüft. True, false, plausible? The biggest disputes, checked by science. The book reached number one on the Spiegel bestseller list in the month it came out. Later that year, Nguyen-Kim won the Grimme Prize for her explanations of the coronavirus.
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.
Knigge Was Not About Table Manners
In German, ein Knigge is a book of rules of conduct for a particular field. Duden’s example is ein Knigge für Handelsvertreter, a Knigge for sales representatives. The word comes from Adolph Freiherr von Knigge, who published Über den Umgang mit Menschen, On Dealing with People, in 1788. His book was less a guide to etiquette than a study of how people deal with one another. It did not explain how to use a knife and fork. The rules were added by later editions, one after another.
Legitimacy Through Procedure
In 1969, the sociologist Niklas Luhmann published Legitimation durch Verfahren, legitimacy through procedure. Luhmann argued that people do not accept decisions by the state because of ideas about what is right. They accept them because they believe in the procedure that produced them, while the outcome is still open, and because they took part in that procedure.