In the animated film Asterix erobert Rom, released in 1976, Asterix and Obelix must obtain Passierschein A38, pass A38, from das Haus, das Verrückte macht, the house that drives you mad. Officials send them from one counter to the next. In German, Passierschein A38 became a common phrase. People use it to mock or complain about bureaucratic madness, when they are sent from office to office. The phrase came back in March 2020, when Germans joked about needing a pass to leave home during the first coronavirus lockdown.
movies
Not on Good Friday
The FSK, the film industry’s voluntary self-regulation body, does more than set age ratings. It also decides whether a film may be shown in public on silent holidays such as Good Friday. The film must suit the serious character of the day. The rule dates from 1952. According to the Berliner Zeitung, the list of films without this release had 756 titles in 2016. Among them are Heidi, Das Leben des Brian (Life of Brian), Max und Moritz and Ghostbusters.
The list now grows only slowly. According to the FSK, more than half of all films lacked the holiday release from the 1950s to the 1970s, but 1 percent or less since 2000. The FSK has called the restriction kaum noch nachvollziehbar, hardly understandable anymore. It applies only to cinemas, not to television or streaming.
Toni Erdmann
In Maren Ade’s film Toni Erdmann of 2016, Ines works in Bucharest on her career as a management consultant. Her father turns up as the invented figure Toni Erdmann and keeps stepping into her working life. At her birthday brunch, meant as team building, Ines declares the brunch a naked party. The film premiered in the competition at Cannes in 2016 and was nominated for an Oscar.
Herr Kaleun
In the film Das Boot, which premiered in 1981, the commander of the submarine has no name. He is addressed only as Herr Kaleun, short for Herr Kapitänleutnant, a naval rank equal to lieutenant. Most of his officers have no names either. The crew calls him der Alte, the old man. At thirty, he is one of the oldest men on board.
The Purchasing Director Comes Home
In Loriot’s film Pappa ante portas, which premiered in 1991, Heinrich Lohse is purchasing director of the Deutsche Röhren AG. To get a volume discount, he buys typewriter paper and erasers for about the next 40 years. Facing early retirement, he resigns and carries his methods home. There, again for a volume discount, he orders dozens of jars of mustard.
Metropolis
Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis had its premiere in 1927. Production took 17 months, with 310 days and 60 nights of shooting, and used 620,000 meters of negative film. The set designer Otto Hunte said that one traffic effect alone took almost six weeks of minutiös genaue Arbeit, meticulously exact work. The budget was planned at 1.5 million Reichsmarks. The film cost about four times as much. The management of the studio, Ufa, felt blackmailed by Lang’s constant demands for more money.
The Diaries Bought in Secret
In 1983 the magazine Stern presented what it said were the diaries of Adolf Hitler. The publisher’s management had bought 62 volumes for 9.34 million marks. Only a few members of the management and of the contemporary history desk knew about the purchase. On 25 April 1983, Stern held an international press conference. On 6 May 1983, news agencies reported that the diaries were forgeries. Experts of the Federal Criminal Police Office and of a federal materials testing institute had shown it beyond doubt. The German Wikipedia article names the editors’ greatest failure. The diaries vorschnell veröffentlicht wurden und man das BKA-Gutachten nicht abwartete. They were published too hastily, and the editors did not wait for the police report. In 1992 Helmut Dietl turned the affair into the satirical film Schtonk!.
The Teachers’ Room
In the film Das Lehrerzimmer, The Teachers’ Lounge, by İlker Çatak, a young teacher tries to solve a series of thefts at her school. She secretly films the staffroom. The matter moves outward, to the parents, the pupils and the school newspaper. An interview she gives to the school newspaper is printed out of context. The film won five German Film Awards in 2023, including Best Film, and was nominated for the Oscar for best international feature film in 2024.
Failure is not an option
The line is associated with Gene Kranz, the NASA flight director during Apollo 13. He did not say it. It was written for the 1995 film.
Kranz liked it enough to use it as the title of his memoir. An invented line about American determination was adopted by the man it was invented for.
Show me the money
From Jerry Maguire, 1996, and shouted rather than spoken. It entered American business speech immediately, because it names the moment when talk is required to convert into something countable.