Before the federal election of 2017, the editors of Zeit Online created Deutschland spricht, Germany Talks. Participants answer political questions with yes or no. A program then pairs people who live close to each other and whose answers are as different as possible. The pairs meet in person to argue. On a Sunday in June 2017, 1,200 people met in pairs to argue. In September 2018 there were 8,000. The jury of the Grimme Online Award said the project fostered respect between political opponents and served democracy “im besten Sinne,” in the best sense.
politics
Parties Must Give Their Reasons
The Federal Agency for Civic Education has offered the Wahl-O-Mat since 2002. It compares a voter’s answers on a list of political statements with the answers of the parties. For the federal election of 2025 it had 38 statements. Each party could add a reason of up to 500 characters to each answer. Users can read these reasons on pages such as Begründungen zu den Thesen, reasons for the statements. The answers come directly from the parties.
Without Alternative
On 18 January 2011, the jury of the Unwort des Jahres, the non-word of the year, chose alternativlos, without alternative, for 2010. Chancellor Angela Merkel and members of her government had used the word since 2009, for example for the bank rescue. The jury gave its reasons. The word suggests that a decision has no alternatives from the start, “und damit auch keine Notwendigkeit der Diskussion und Argumentation.” And therefore no need for discussion and argument. The linguist Horst Dieter Schlosser, who led the jury, called the word “das Basta der Merkel-Regierung.” It was the government’s way of saying basta, that is final.
A Health Minister From the Field
On 6 December 2021, Olaf Scholz presented the Social Democratic ministers of his new government. He named Karl Lauterbach health minister. “Viele Menschen haben sich in Deutschland gewünscht, dass der Gesundheitsminister vom Fach ist und dass der nächste Minister Karl Lauterbach heißt. Er wird es.” Many people in Germany had wished that the health minister would be someone from the field, and that the next minister would be Karl Lauterbach. He will be. Lauterbach is a physician and health economist. He had become known across the country through television talk shows during the pandemic. The medical journal Ärzteblatt called his obsession with detail his trademark. In the days before the announcement, the hashtag #wirwollenKarl, we want Karl, had spread on Twitter.
The Chancellor Uses His Directive Power
In October 2022, the Greens and the FDP in Olaf Scholz’s government disagreed on how long Germany’s last three nuclear plants should run. On 17 October, Scholz settled it in a letter. He invoked his Richtlinienkompetenz, the chancellor’s power to set the guidelines of policy, under § 1 of the federal government’s rules of procedure. He instructed the ministers Habeck, Lemke and Lindner to draft the laws needed to keep Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland running until 15 April 2023 at the latest. A journalist said on Swiss radio that day: Es ist tatsächlich ungewöhnlich, in Deutschland als Kanzler die Richtlinienkompetenz zu ziehen. It is indeed unusual in Germany for a chancellor to use the directive power.
The Competence Team
In German election campaigns, the candidate for chancellor often presents a Kompetenzteam, a competence team. Its members stand for important policy areas. In 2005, Angela Merkel’s team included Paul Kirchhof, a former judge of the Federal Constitutional Court with no party membership. He was meant to become her finance minister. After the election produced a grand coalition, Kirchhof said he was not available. Looking back at such outside experts in 2009, the taz wrote of Kirchhof: Die Rechnung ging nicht auf. The calculation did not work out.
Merkel and the Reproduction Number
On 15 April 2020, after a meeting with the state premiers, Chancellor Angela Merkel explained why most pandemic restrictions would stay in place and easing would be slow. At the end of the press conference, she did it with arithmetic. The reproduction number then stood at about one. If it rose by only a tenth to 1.1, she said, the health system would reach its limit in October. At 1.2 it would reach it in July. At 1.3 it would reach it in June.
Visions and the Doctor
Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen. Whoever has visions should go to the doctor. The sentence is attributed to Helmut Schmidt, and he accepted it. In 2010 he told the ZEITmagazin that he had said it only once, about 35 to 40 years earlier. He called it eine pampige Antwort auf eine dusselige Frage, a cheeky answer to a silly question. But no written record of Schmidt saying it has been found before 1997. In Austria, the philosopher Rudolf Burger dated his own version to 1986, and in 1988 the magazine profil printed a version attributed to Chancellor Franz Vranitzky, who later denied saying it. The sentence may have found its way to the German politician it suited best.
Questions in Parliament
The rules of the Bundestag allow a speech to be interrupted with a question. With the speaker’s consent, the president may give the floor for Zwischenfragen, interim questions, which must be short and precise. A member may also make a short intervention of no more than two minutes, and the speaker may answer once more. On 6 June 2018, the chancellor faced members’ questions directly in the Bundestag for the first time. The coalition agreement had obliged Angela Merkel to do so three times a year. Each question had one minute, and each answer had one minute.
Apprenticeship, Evening School, Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder trained as a retail salesman in a china shop in Lemgo, finishing in 1961. From 1962 to 1964 he went to evening school for the intermediate school certificate. In 1966 he passed the Abitur at the Westfalen-Kolleg in Bielefeld, a school for adults. He then studied law in Göttingen and passed the first state exam in 1971. His foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, took the other road. He left the Gymnasium in 1965 without a diploma and broke off an apprenticeship as a photographer in 1966. By his own account, he attended lectures in Frankfurt as a guest. Until 1981 he worked as a taxi driver.