I have been meaning to write something about German allotments and now Sarah Webb has done the work for me in the expat part of the Telegraph. She has succeeded in renting an allotment in Bremen, and renting one is an achievement in itself.

There are 15 parts to it, the lengthiest being the paragraph on Nutzung or “use of the garden”! These rules and regulations often have nothing to do with the more modern view that a garden is recreational rather than purely functional.
But what strikes one as classically Germanic in the contract are details such as the specified limit of 1m, 10cm for a hedge – and these things are checked.
This gives the gardens a certain uniformity which I for one could do without. However, to be fair, it is often this desire for uniformity which keeps standards maintained.

Wikipedia gives some impression of the difference between a British allotment and a German Schrebergarten. Here is the Bundeskleingartengesetz and here something on Kleingartenrecht.

The word Rechtsbehelf is a problem to translate into English. I will quote my earlier entry:

Rechtsbehelfe are either 1) Rechtsmittel – appeals to a higher court (Berufung, Revision, Beschwerde) or 2) [nameless] – appeals on the same level (Einspruch, Widerspruch, Erinnerung, Gegenvorstellung)
I think I would call the whole lot appeals.

I suppose people who use the term in German aren’t always sure what they’re saying. Or maybe they don’t understand the word recourse in English.

Sue Turton, the Channel Four journalist whose bum was pinched by a passer-by as she was reporting live from the floods (video), said (my emphasis):

I’ve no desire to punish this man through the courts. But I did wonder if I accepted such behaviour without complaint what hope do women who are groped in public in this way have of any recourse?
I personally found the matter quite humiliating and somewhat disrespectful to the plight of those I was reporting about.
Some may say I’m being prudish. It’s true I’ve been in much more threatening situations throughout my reporting career, but they were in far flung places where personal space isn’t a priority.

The German version:

Turton wolle ihn nicht anzeigen, sagt sie. Jedoch die Polizei solle ihm auf die Finger klopfen, “welche Hoffnung auf Rechtsbehelf können Frauen ansonsten überhaupt haben”, so Turton.

He’s going to get a fixed-penalty notice (something like a Bußgeldbescheid).

Thames Valley Police have asked Channel 4 News for a video of the incident – which can also be viewed on YouTube – and told MediaGuardian.co.uk that they intended to issue the culprit with an £80 fixed-penalty notice for a public order offence.

Now obviously Sue Turton didn’t want an appeal – she doesn’t even want first-instance proceedings. She meant something like Abhilfe, although not quite that. Of course I suppose remedy is a synonym, but (see the same earlier entry) that isn’t easy to translate either.

But what happened in this case? The German who translated the text was not quite familiar with either the English or the German term, but knew they sounded vaguely legal, so they must be right?

(Via Werner Siebers)

There has been some discussion of stopping the solidarity surcharge paid together with German income tax since reunification, although it was supposed to end years ago. The Independent has an article on the subject today:

Ten per cent of the world’s taxation literature refers to the German tax system. There are 118 laws, 185 forms, 418 exceptions and 96,000 regulations, with one single legal comment on taxation alone covering 2,671 pages.
The administration of the German tax laws runs to a spine-numbing 28,000 pages and administrating it costs €23.7bn a year – approximately 2.5 per cent of the total amount of income tax yielded annually.
With such a magnificent and costly bureaucracy to maintain, the opponents of the soli tax fear it will be around to haunt their children and grandchildren as much as it does them.

The Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice) has held that an advertising campaign by Kelloggs in 2003, ‘Kellogg’s [the apostrophe remains part of the name even in German – see comments] Frosties für den Schulsport’, violates competition law. The action was started by a consumer umbrella organization, vzbv (Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband). The judgment has not yet been published.

Der Bundesgerichtshof hat nach vierjähriger Verfahrensdauer eine im Jahr 2003 durchgeführte Werbeaktion der Firma Kellogg “Kellogg’s Frosties für den Schulsport” als wettbewerbswidrig erachtet. Die Werbung sei geeignet, die geschäftliche Unerfahrenheit von Kindern und Jugendlichen auszunutzen, lautete das in der vergangenen Woche verkündete Urteil. Mit dem Musterverfahren wollte der vzbv klären lassen, wo die Grenzen der Schulwerbung liegen. “Wir hoffen, dass mit den Grundsätzen des Bundesgerichtshofs der immer weiter um sich greifenden Kommerzialisierung an Schulen dauerhaft Einhalt geboten werden kann”, kommentierte vzbv-Vorstand Prof. Dr. Edda Müller den Richterspruch.

The idea was that children collected Tony dollars (Tony Taler) from Kelloggs products and exchanged them for sports goods for their school. To get a badminton set for 50 Taler, you had to buy about 59 packets of Frosties at EUR 2.79 each.

The IPKAT has heard of this and says it couldn’t happen in Britain – British schools would just take the money.

The IPKat says, this case accentuates a big cultural difference between the Germans and the British. The Germans say, here’s a a cynical abuse of childish desire for the sake of marketing a big commercial brand. The Brits say, “come on, let’s buy some more cereal before the offer expires!”. Merpel says, it is a cynical exploitation, yes – but is it wrong to do it in a free market in which all Kellogg’s competitors are able to do exactly the same thing?

Yes, if we could stop everything that children could become addicted to to the impoverishment of their parents, we would certainly not stop at Kellogg’s Frosties.

Here’s something from a British school from the Google cache:

Kellogg’s amicable Frosties character, Tony the Tiger, paid a surprise visit to the school. He distributed a mixed selection of Kellogg’s cereal bars to the four year old children attending the Kindergarten classes.
Kellogg’s cereal bars are a new and healthy snack that can be eaten at breakfast or at any time of the day. They are delicious and rich in cereals and come in different tastes. The bars are individually wrapped and are convenient for a quick snack.

OB-Chat Podiumstranskript.

The OB-Chat took place again last week without my participation. But I knew I would only have complained about the peculiar bronze-coloured ‘seating’ arrangements in the pedestrian zone. Here’s the transcript from the platform. A few quotes: Angela Merkel was here to speak at a celebration of Ludwig Erhard:

Schwarzer: War Ihnen die Bundeskanzlerin sympathisch?
OB Jung: Sie war in ihrem eher bescheidenen Auftreten und sehr sachlichen Vortrag ohne parteipolitische Schärfe durchaus sympathisch.
Schwarzer: Die Beckstein-Rede beim Festakt war aber unter aller Kanone, oder?
OB Jung: Leider hat der Innenminister der Versuchung nicht widerstanden, parteipolitisch gefärbt zu sprechen. Auch hat er viel zu oft den Namen der Nachbarstadt betont.

Yes, I believe that. Now on to the important topic of the seating in the pedestrian zone:

michael: Hallo Thomas, möchte dir erst einmal dank dafür aussprechen, das du als OB wieder einen Chat mitmachts. Zur Fußgängerzone habe ich ein paar Fragen und zwar möchte ich wissen, ob es noch mehr Sitzgelegenheiten für Älter Menschen gibt, und wo diese aufgestellt werden-, denn die jetzt aufgestellten Möglichkeiten sind unbequem und stehen in der Wassergosse. Weiterhin möchte ich wissen, wann mit den Arbeiten weitergemacht wird.
OB Jung: Die Fortsetzung der Arbeiten erfolgt im Frühjahr. Während des Jubiläumsjahrs wollen wir keine Baustellen in der FuZo haben. Hinsichtlich der Bänke kann man sicher noch nachbessern. Dies ist auch für den 2. Teil der FuZo vorgesehen, mit vielen zusätzlichen Bäumen.

That was surprisingly restrained. Normally the official line is to praise the furniture. But here’s something that completely mystifies me:

ameenzer: Die Fußgägerzone gestaltet sich ganz gut u.a. das auch Bäume gepflanzt werden. Was macht eigentlich der Verkaufsautomat des VGN noch vor Müller?
OB Jung: Der ärgert mich mit der grünen Farbe auch. Ich habe erst diese Woche bei der infra die Neulackierung (Bronze) der neuen Bänke angemahnt. Der Automat selbst muss stehen bleiben, weil er eine der besten
Verkaufsstellen der VAG in der ganzen Stadt darstellt.

I think the ticket machine is OK. But I could understand people wanting it removed. Even the argument that it sells more tickets than any other is not a strong one, since people have to buy tickets and would simply be forced to go elsewhere. But what I can’t understand is why it should not be green. The more colours, the better. If everything went bronze-coloured, it would be funereal. Here’s a photograph of the offending object, with some bronze ‘seats’, wastebins and tree surrounds in the background:

And another:

Some time ago I was irritated, like many people, by the then minister of cultural affairs’ use of the word brain up. Scarcely twenty-four hours after I had posted about this, I had to eat my words (in German, one eats Hirn rather than Gehirn): sure enough, the term could be justified – although I still don’t like it.

Now Bremer Sprachblog reports that German papers are still complaining about it. My past record means I can’t be very smug about this.

Mir ist schon klar, dass die Fähigkeit zur eigenständigen Recherche auch in den Printmedien nicht mehr so ernst genommen wird wie früher. Vielleicht steht in den Redaktionsräumen der ZEIT auch kein aktuelles englisches Wörterbuch. Aber ich bin mir ziemlich sicher, dass man dort Internetzugang hat und dass man weiß, wie Google zu bedienen ist. Also hätte man doch einfach einmal die Wörter to brain up eingeben können. Die Suche hätte man auf Webseiten aus Großbritannien, dem Mutterland der englischen Sprache, einschränken können, um wirklich nur englischstes Englisch zu erhalten. Und dann hätte man unter den ersten Treffern gleich mehrere Seiten bedeutender britischer Presseorgane gefunden, die zweifelsfrei belegen, dass das phrasale Verb to brain up sehr wohl existiert.

Of course, these are the people who think we stole wishy-washy from them.