Every Max Planck institute has a Fachbeirat, a board of outside experts who review its work. The board meets alle drei Jahre, every three years, and in some cases more often. It assesses the quality and originality of the research and whether the strategy and the resources fit. It does so in beratender Funktion, in an advisory role.
Every six years, there is an extended review. It looks at related institutes in one research field together.
At many German universities the basic unit is the Lehrstuhl, the chair. A professor holds it, and its staff work in dependence on that professor. In 2018 the sociologist Peter Ullrich described the system in the Tagesspiegel as Feudalverhältnisse, feudal relations, in which resources are divided between konkurrierenden Fürstentümern, competing principalities. On 28 January 2026 the Bundestag’s research committee held a hearing on department structures. One expert said that in Germany the chair model often applies. Another said that his institute had already left it behind. A third warned that department structures must not be imposed from above.
In 1992 the German Medical Assembly created an independent medical specialty for psychotherapeutic medicine, with five years of specialist training. Since 2003 it has been called psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy.
Basic psychosomatic care asks doctors to include biological, psychological and social factors in diagnosis, treatment and the understanding of illness. The physician Thure von Uexküll (1908–2004) helped establish psychosomatics as a university discipline in Germany. He worked with the bio-psycho-social model.
Vernetztes Denken, networked thinking. The scientist Frederic Vester (1925–2003) made the phrase common in Germany. When he died, Der Tagesspiegel called him the “Erfinder des vernetzten Denkens”, the inventor of networked thinking.
Vester was a member of the Club of Rome. He developed a sensitivity model for analyzing complex systems. One of his best-known books is Die Kunst vernetzt zu denken, the art of thinking in networks.
In 1866 the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel defined a new science in his work Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. He called it Oecologie: “die gesammte Wissenschaft von den Beziehungen des Organismus zur umgebenden Aussenwelt”. It was the whole science of the relations of an organism to the world around it.
Haeckel counted all the conditions of existence among these relations, in the wider sense. The Federal Environment Agency lists his definition in its chronicle of environmental history under the year 1866.
Alles ist Wechselwirkung. Everything is interaction. Alexander von Humboldt wrote this sentence in 1803. The researcher Tobias Kraft says of it: “Wenn es eine Humboldt-Formel gibt, dann ist es dieser Satz.” If there is a Humboldt formula, it is this sentence.
Humboldt wanted to explore the larger connections behind each single observation. The Humboldt scholar Ottmar Ette calls his science a Vernetzungswissenschaft, a science of connections.
Since 2019 the German Research Foundation (DFG) has had a binding code of good scientific practice. Its first guideline obliges researchers alle Ergebnisse konsequent selbst anzuzweifeln, to consistently doubt all their own results. They must einen kritischen Diskurs in der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft zuzulassen und zu fördern, allow and promote critical discourse in the scientific community, and keep strikte Ehrlichkeit, strict honesty, about their own contributions and those of others.
The code of good scientific practice of the German Research Foundation (DFG), in force since 2019, sets the rules for authorship. An author is a person who has made a genuine and traceable contribution to the content of a publication. Eine Leitungs- oder Vorgesetztenfunktion begründet für sich allein keine Mitautorschaft. A leading or supervisory position does not by itself justify co-authorship. Eine Ehrenautorschaft, bei der gerade kein solcher Beitrag geleistet wurde, ist nicht zulässig. Honorary authorship, without such a contribution, is not permitted.
Around 1810 Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote a memorandum on the organization of the higher scientific institutions in Berlin. Humboldt led the founding of the new Berlin university in 1810, and the text reflects his idea of it. Das Verhältniss zwischen Lehrer und Schüler wird daher durchaus ein anderes als vorher. Der erstere ist nicht für die letzteren, Beide sind für die Wissenschaft da. The relationship between teacher and student therefore becomes entirely different from before. The former is not there for the latter. Both are there for science.
In Germany a doctorate is not complete when the oral exam is passed. The thesis must first be published. The University of Göttingen states the rule plainly: Vorher darf der Doktorgrad nicht geführt werden. Before that, the doctoral degree may not be used. Göttingen allows two years after the oral exam. At LMU Munich, a candidate who chooses conventional printing must deliver 80 copies, the Pflichtexemplare. If the final, extended deadline passes, the rights earned by the exam lapse.