The upside is that this will actually provide lots of research funding to small companies. Think of it like the seed round from a VC, but instead of investing into new companies, they try to strategically invest into existing companies to boost future tax revenue.
It'll probably be very German, meaning overly bureaucratic. But the basic idea of financing R&D in small companies to grow them more competitive seems legit to me.
As an example of what was funded by similar German government grants, you can look at voize, which is (by now) also a YC company: https://en.voize.de/uber-uns
Applying for a grant is normally difficult. In Germany, it's outright hellish. I
hope I will be pleasantly surprised.
jsemrau 2 hours ago [-]
Applying for a grant in the European Commission is a labyrinth of different websites each with their own need to register. Grant Specs are largely in PDFs or Word Documents that are attached to the call. And it takes at least 6-9 months from open to decision. I have applied to about 20 grants throughout 2024 and haven't heard anything back from a single one yet.
throwaway2037 2 hours ago [-]
You should blog about your experience and submit to HN. I am sure you can get lots of good advice to improve your chances.
jsemrau 41 minutes ago [-]
This has spawned almost an entire industry. Have a look at Zebra Embassy in Berlin as an example. I think it would be easier to "digitally transform" the process to be more efficient.
_fizz_buzz_ 26 minutes ago [-]
I have applied for a few grants in Germany and also got them. It’s honestly not that difficult. If you have a large consortium with many partners it can become complicated but mostly because of the partners and not the government. My secret advice: when there is a grant there is also always a number you call or an email address, if anything is unclear, you can call them and they have always been very helpful.
fxtentacle 8 hours ago [-]
It's boring but otherwise harmless. You skim through 20 pages of legalese and fill out the blanks. Your local goverment office has an advisor who will check the forms together with you before you submit them. (I applied for and received a De-Minimis grant.) Plus for the larger grant types, there are advisory companies that work on commission.
timmg 8 hours ago [-]
Finally: a good use for LLMs ;)
FirmwareBurner 8 hours ago [-]
Not if they ban, errr I mean regulate them ;)
franze 9 hours ago [-]
the good thing now with AI you can write all those pages of bullshit nobody reads bit you will accountable to if things dont work out
foobarian 9 hours ago [-]
Didn't we get MP3s this way? Or is that a slightly different pathway
fxtentacle 9 hours ago [-]
Fraunhofer is (by now) only financed 30% through tax money and 70% comes from the royalties on their past developments like MP3 and H264 and H265 and MPEG-H.
Anyway, Fraunhofer gets recurring tax funding. What voize got is a one-off research grant to a group of companies:
- voize
- Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin (a medical university)
- Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH, Berlin (a government AI research lab)
- Connext Communication GmbH, Paderborn (a tech company)
- Kleeblatt Pflegeheime gGmbH, Ludwigsburg (a retirement home, i.e. potential end user)
- Pflegewohnhaus am Waldkrankenhaus gGmbH, Berlin (another retirement home)
For this grant type, it's quite common that you pay the inventors, some assistant companies, some researchers, and some end users a lump sum to force them all to work together on commercializing the invention.
w-m 8 hours ago [-]
That’s not quite right for Fraunhofer: The financing model is also heavily dependent on research grants. The base funding is indeed around 30%. But another 40% are from publicly funded research projects. The last 30% are from research contracted by industry. In 2023, license fee revenue was €157M / €2991M, so roughly 5% of total contract research volume.
I dont want the govt to fund any research funding. As a tax payer i did not vote this. I want to decide who i fund or not. It just means, my taxes will not go down. :/
encrypted_bird 3 hours ago [-]
I suppose then you won't get nearly as much medical research, technological research, scientific research. Seriously, you may not realize just how much genuine academic research at colleges, universities, and technical institutes rely on government grants.
At least that's how it is in the US. I'm unsure how different, if at all, it is in Germany.
throwaway2037 2 hours ago [-]
Tip: All highly industrialised, wealthy nations are the same. Central govt provides huge sums for academic research with the hope that it can be commercialised.
paveroadstax 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
pasabagi 9 hours ago [-]
I actually think Germany would be really good at digital infrastructure if they stopped being afraid of friend computer. Germany is immensely proud of its history of creating standards - there's literally a place in berlin called DIN Platz. Germany is also very proud, and rightly so, in its history of mathematical innovation.
Everything that isn't dross in the computer world is either a well designed standard, or a well designed algorithm. If the German government adopted a sensible standard for government documents, for example, and mandated that all documents must be saved in it, that would already make a huge difference.
DataDaoDe 8 hours ago [-]
Germany has tons of potential, but Germany is one of the most risk averse countries on the planet (see Uncertainty Avoidance Cultures)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_avoidance]. This makes it amazing at building high quality industrial products, taking innovation done elsewhere and refining and polishing it, slowly over many years - building standards as you say. However, it doesn't help much in the innovation department. Also as probably the world leader in data privacy and protection that's another vector working against innovation. And then there is the robust legislation and bureaucracy (in a controlling sense) around all financial products (not to mention in general), which gives Germany advantages in certain industries but is also a distinct disadvantage for innovation in many sectors. There is also a massive union culture, which provides Germans with a great quality of life, but again, that's something probably negatively correlated to innovation.
I'd like to see more innovation in general and if this leads to that its good. But I don't personally think that innovation needs to happen in Germany, so long as it happens somewhere and Germans can do what they do best with it.
chme 15 minutes ago [-]
> There is also a massive union culture, which provides Germans with a great quality of life, but again, that's something probably negatively correlated to innovation.
Hmm... So if people struggle in life and have live from hand to mouth in multiple jobs to support their family and loved ones, they are more innovative?
Dracophoenix 2 hours ago [-]
How does the Germany of today reconcile itself with the iconoclasts of its past from mathematicians, physicists, chemists, explorers, filmmakers, and industrialists who set the stage for modern life during the late 19th and early 20th centuries?
throwaway2037 2 hours ago [-]
> Uncertainty Avoidance Cultures
How do you explain all of the groundbreaking technologies and processes that have come from Japan and Korea? Both are at the extreme end of uncertainty avoidance.
andrepd 8 hours ago [-]
> Also as probably the world leader in data privacy and protection that's another vector working against innovation
Extremely thick irony here
shermantanktop 8 hours ago [-]
> Everything that isn't dross in the computer world is either a well designed standard, or a well designed algorithm
You must be hanging out in a different part of the computer world.
What I see is that most standards reflect evolved systems, and those standards usually have many amendments. Most algorithms are generation descendants of broken predecessors. I love hearing about a singular talent coming up with something new and getting the world to listen, but the story is usually way messier than that.
j-krieger 9 hours ago [-]
> I actually think Germany would be really good at digital infrastructure if they stopped being afraid of friend computer.
They still have the automotive / electrical engineering mindset on computers and software. Software in Germany is built to achieve a means to an end. It is never the end goal itself.
Barrin92 5 hours ago [-]
>Software in Germany is built to achieve a means to an end. It is never the end goal itself.
Well, that's how it should be, I don't write software to worship any software deities, I use it to get a job done. If you don't you end up with that 700 dollar useless gadget that was basically a python API wrapper in a box that everyone rightfully made fun of.
We can do a lot of things better in software in Germany but treating it as an engineering discipline is a good thing, I think even the US is probably past the peak of the zero interest free money toy product phase and people are focusing more on real industry again.
flipgimble 3 hours ago [-]
What he means is that Germans are less susceptible to the SV bullshit artists that are hyping up their bubble unicorns for VC money, inflating companies with workers just to sell them at peak of the hype before cutting all those “positions” and then en-shittifying the product.
Technology coasted for a few decades gaining public’s trust as an unquestionable improvement over the past. That reputation is wearing out faster than I’d like to admit.
I hear from friends and family that SV big tech are increasingly equated with surveilence, credit card leaks, and destructive games of billionaires detached from reality. I had a long potluck talk with a stranger that was convinced ChatGPT is analogous to another crypto scam. It blew my mind and opened my eyes that could be a popular opinion.
janderson215 1 hours ago [-]
Popular opinion and fact can be very different.
I agree Germans are less susceptible to SV bullshit artists, but they also miss out on the upside for game changing ideas. Whether this is a net negative or net positive is yet to be determined. Up to this point, it has been Germany’s financial loss to over index on the engineeriness. Maybe it is America’s loss to over index on the financial outcomes and the truly world changing ideas and those very same ideas can be a net negative. I would have said 2 months ago that you would be hard pressed to find people on this message board who would agree with the latter, but I think that may have changed significantly recently.
whilo 4 hours ago [-]
As a German coming from Mannheim, and now living on the Canadian West coast, I have to say that this is exactly the mindset that makes it so difficult to innovate in Germany. While people have a top education and know everything they need to, they don't have a "digital mindset". I think of myself now as computing process, and see myself as a cyberneticist in the German philosophical tradition of Hegel, Marx, Hilbert, Gödel and Bloch, but even I more often than necessary mistrust innovations.
Almost all the science fiction and cybernetic work of the last 75 years came either out of the Eastern block, or out of the US. There is basically no German sci fi vision, and there is extreme reluctance to speculative, big picture thinking as it is pursued in Silicon Valley. Software companies grow quickly and need a very different approach. Silicon Valley mostly understands this scaling aspect and winner take all markets really well. German investors are cheap and extremely risk averse, I tried to build a software company in Germany and it is hard.
While a lot of the current AI work was also done in Germany, e.g. by Schmidhuber, Germans are stuck in their business model. I recommend Münchau's book "Kaput" (or one of his podcast interviews) on how poorly Germans have adapted to the non-industrial aspects of a modern economy (read: "services"). I really hope that more tech founder thinking like Benz, Bosch or Siemens returns to Germany in a modern form. But I don't see it yet, and Germans are still super reactive and conservative to larger changes. The Greens tried to think a bit out of the box, and were heavily punished for it. In general there is basically no political representation for building a new successful economy. At best there is this nice little narrative about the long established "Mittelstand", which has produce almost zero software companies. The first step right now would be to own the idea of the EU, and wanting to win instead of complaining.
331c8c71 18 minutes ago [-]
Hmmm, does Jurgen Schmidhuber live in Germany? I'd think primarily Ticino where he spent the majority of his career if I understand correctly.
fxtentacle 9 hours ago [-]
We actually have a rather recent government agency called "DigitalHub" for that, too, which has been quite successful at pushing open standards and open source. Then there's https://zendis.de/#produkte whose sole purpose is to replace non-EU closed-source software, for example by replacing Windows + Office with Linux and the custom desktop software suite https://opendesk.eu/
ZeWaka 9 hours ago [-]
openSUSE!
submeta 9 hours ago [-]
Many German companies want „Digitalisierung“, workflow automation, process improvements, they want to use AI, LLMs, but when it comes to implementing all of that, they are drowning in bureaucracy.
What Germans can do is create layers of bureaucracy.
rrr_oh_man 9 hours ago [-]
The problem is not the bureaucracy.
Nobody's stopping a local mid-market manufacturer from automating workflows. Or hindering a utility company from offering a better service process.
The problem is corporate leadership.
German companies tend to be run by people who are inflexible, uninspired, and cheap. Maybe it's in the culture. Compare this to Austria, where there's a cultural flair for the dramatic (and therefore an eagerness to stand out, even if it's weird) or Switzerland where enterprises, public or private, are not afraid to place big bets.
valenterry 4 hours ago [-]
> The problem is not the bureaucracy.
It absolutely is. Try to open a company in Germany. Then try to do your tax. Then try to close your company.
After that, let's talk again about bureaucracy.
Oh, and the new government just announced plans that non-employeed people (freelancers, business owners, ...) are now forced to pay into national pension (with few exceptions). And don't get me started on that one. Just as an example, national pension charges based on your income. But they have a different way to calculate income than the tax office.
Let me say it in other words if it's not clear yet: If someone is practically unable to do all the above without an accountant then the bureaucracy is absolutely out of hands.
janderson215 1 hours ago [-]
Have you also done these things in the US? I have heard this sentiment that the German system is far and above the more bureaucratic before, but for all I know, Americans could just be relatively complacent in comparison to Germans and our systems function nearly identically. I’d like to hear from someone if they have been through both processes first hand who could answer this question.
Americans constantly complain about the tax system and, like them or not in practice, a lot of US citizens on both sides of the aisle believe in one of the stated goals of DOGE (previously named the US Digital Service).
valenterry 27 minutes ago [-]
> Have you also done these things in the US?
No, and in the context of the thread I care little about the US. This thread is about Germany and is specifically about "they [the companies] are drowning in bureaucracy" and "The problem is not the bureaucracy". And my post was a response to that. The US might be worse (I doubt it) but it has basically no relevance imo.
nisa 6 hours ago [-]
As a German I would love to contradict this but I tend to agree. Bureaucracy isn't such a big deal in my experience - might be different depending what area you are working in - but the leadership culture regarding software is the cause of most of the misery I've seen and I've been involved with.
Cheap as in no investments in people or software quality. Salaries are also not competitive in a lot of places.
Disregard for the user and disregard for usability.
Unfortunately most software shops locked in their customers and the lack of any technical merit pays well and is disconnected from product quality.
Only lots of bankruptcies might help. I have nothing but disdain for these people in leadership.
I've surely not seen all but I've seen enough. It's that bad.
calmoo 9 hours ago [-]
Both can be true, and what you described is, in my opinion, one of the primary causes of insane bureaucracy in Germany. This inflexible mindset is what causes the relentless enforcement of bureaucracy and procedures in Germany, there is very little leeway here in terms of bending the rules, making exceptions, turning a blind eye. This cultural inflexibility, traditionalism and risk-aversion all ties together into a paperwork and red-tape nigthmare.
nicbou 4 hours ago [-]
This couldn't be more incorrect. I document German bureaucracy for a living. The hardest part of my job is that every state, city, office and case worker applies the rules differently, making it really hard to predict a specific outcome. In most cases it plays in people's favour, unless the case worker is particularly grumpy and you happen to hit one of their pet peeves. I struggle to document the variance for Berlin alone.
The biggest issue with German bureaucracy is that it's largely paper-based and has little to no automation. In many cases, digitalisation when it happens just means sending documents digitally instead of delivering them during an in-person appointment. This leads to very long processing times that are constrained by available labour.
ost-ing 8 hours ago [-]
Sums it up pretty well
Casteil 9 hours ago [-]
>The problem is not the bureaucracy.
I'm no expert by any means, but have you ever actually worked with Germans?
The existence of Betriebsräte (Workers' Councils, as implemented in Germany), while not necessarily 'bad', comes with a mountain of bureaucracy...
geff82 9 hours ago [-]
… yeah, never give rights to workers! Back to the middle ages again!
Betriebsräte are actually a really sane measure once you think about it. And the more intelligent managers take them as an asset.
Casteil 8 hours ago [-]
Did you completely miss the "while not necessarily 'bad'" part of my post?
mk89 8 hours ago [-]
Not the OP, but I don't understand what your original comment was trying to convey.
You took in my opinion unfortunately the worst example you could. Unions are by definition bureaucratic because they need to be...
valenterry 4 hours ago [-]
Betriebsräte are not unions though...
mk89 23 minutes ago [-]
You're right, technically they are different. However, the context is relatively similar - lots of laws to know about, etc.
ahartmetz 9 hours ago [-]
The main problem that I see in leadership is lack of understanding and respect for software - "I don't understand it so how hard can it be?". Seems to be especially prevalent at German car companies where, apparently, mechanical engineering is still boss. (I'd be fine with a car with very little software, but that is not what they are trying to build...)
mhitza 9 hours ago [-]
> Compare this to Austria, where there's a cultural flair for the dramatic (and therefore an eagerness to stand out, even if it's weird) or Switzerland where enterprises, public or private, are not afraid to place big bets.
Can you call out with some examples for those of us unfamiliar with those 'big bets'?
Switzerland sits between Germany, Italy, and France, and was getting choked by road traffic, so voters have approved the largest tunnels in the world to get goods around and through Switzerland without using roads.
j-krieger 9 hours ago [-]
> The problem is not the bureaucracy
The problem is definitely bureaucracy. Any German founder will agree with this.
thinkindie 9 hours ago [-]
LOL - I can second that. There are a lot of memes about nothing screams more "Digitalisierung!" than having to send papers via fax.
Or having to carry cash coz a lot of places don't even give you the option to pay by card (even though this seems to come to an end, hello 2025!)
submeta 9 hours ago [-]
Random German company: You open your intranet, manually search through hundreds of (pdf!) application-forms (because search is not implemented), downlod the right form, print it(!), fill the form, sign it, scan the paper, send it to the ticket system. That’s what they call „Digitalisierung“, because previously they had to send the printed paper-form to the helpdesk team.
calmoo 9 hours ago [-]
I recently signed up for a simple prepaid phone plan in Germany (I have lived here for 2 years already, fully registered etc). I had to go through the full KYC process, after waiting over a week for a physical SIM card to be sent by post to me. After this, I wanted an eSIM (this was my original goal but this was not possible on initial signup).
I had to contact customer support to send me one... by post. They only activate and send eSIMs by mail. This will take another week.
bcye 9 hours ago [-]
How recently? Nowadays there are a bunch of "app eSIM" companies competing in Germany that offer to get you an eSIM by just installing an app, KYC and credit card in 5 min
calmoo 7 hours ago [-]
A few days ago - I had some strict requirements of extremely low monthly cost (I only need it for sending and receiving SMS and for signing up for certain german services that require a German number) - so I want with O2 Prepaid. There are a lot of instant sign up eSIMs that are data only, which is not what I'm looking for.
I would be surprised if you're talking about an eSIM service that give you a phone number.
pezezin 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds like my random Japanese company, except for the fact that here all the forms are created in Excel.
thinkindie 9 hours ago [-]
luckily I haven't been working with such companies, I have had enough of my dose of Digitalisierung by interacting with public offices. But at least I can communicate with the Finanzamt via email, after signing a document where I made clear I understand that emails are not a safe communication tool (while random non-certified letters are, apparently).
hobofan 9 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I'm sure a thousand lovely Horizon 2040 funded research projects that result in throwaway academic solutions to hyper-specific industry issues where the first MVP is shown after 5 years will come out of this.
nextos 9 hours ago [-]
Not even throwaway. They will result in reports and keynote presentations, but nothing truly functional. The EU doesn't understand how to structure incentives to make things work and avoid rent-seekers and grifters. Source, I've been part of some large EU consortia. Never again.
twothreeone 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I was always surprised by how many organizations will actually jump at the opportunity to "participate" when some EU consortia was announcing a new program or funding round.
There's a saying for that in German involving "feeding trough" and "pigs".
markus_zhang 9 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of a quote from "Yes minister" in which it says one commissioner pays a farmer a lot of money to produce and another to remove the surplus, plus a lot of paper pushing in the middle.
whimsicalism 8 hours ago [-]
Surprised to see the negativity in the comments - if executed well, this is exactly the sort of thing governments should be aiming to do: solving social coordination problems and funding with long-term horizons.
franze 8 hours ago [-]
*executed well*
but first regulated to death
andy_ppp 8 hours ago [-]
I have an alternative theory about tech and growth in Europe - the rich are too greedy here and are not optimistic enough about growth. They:
a) don’t fund risky things
b) don’t believe Europe can create unicorns so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy for their investments
c) try to cash out too quickly from potentially huge businesses
d) valuations are half the investment for double the equity, so of course the companies have half the runway and half the upside.
whimsicalism 8 hours ago [-]
No comment except that 'the rich are too greedy here' is an extremely european explanation for EU economic underperformance.
andy_ppp 8 hours ago [-]
You’re completely misinterpreting and taking out of context the whole point I’m trying to make for a cheap swipe at Europe. Do you actually disagree with what I said or are you trying to win Internet points with semantics? Do you even disagree with the bulk of my complaint about investment in Europe?
Do you even disagree that investors try to take a larger equity position in companies in the EU than in the US?
cavisne 7 hours ago [-]
Europe is mostly "old money" so this makes sense. They didn't earn that money they are custodians of it.
mhitza 4 hours ago [-]
> don’t believe Europe can create unicorns so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy for their investments
There sure would like though. What I've followed in the Horizon program was a fixation of chasing "last years" technology.
Problem was , that for all those funding programmes they had quite stingent company requirements which stopped startups and small companies from having a go at it. Larger companies had no issue navigating this process and chewing the cash without actually delivering good or innovative products.
whimsicalism 8 hours ago [-]
I think the EU is increasingly aware of its faults, especially in Germany & France. Happy to watch them cook and I say that as an American who has watched on with pain at what the EU has done to itself over the last decade+.
analog31 8 hours ago [-]
Are their people worse off?
DataDaoDe 8 hours ago [-]
I can't speak for France, but for Germany, unfortunately, by most metrics that matter (affordable housing, infrastructure, subjective well-being, energy costs, labor markets, etc.) compared to 20 years ago, yes. However, compared to most other countries, Germany is still doing quite well. So it all depends on the context for how you interpret the data.
For example there is increasing consensus that Merkel's "black-zero" budget requirements set the stage for today's collapsing German infrastructure and lack of productivity growth due to decreased public investment.
whimsicalism 8 hours ago [-]
Think it has much more to do with traditional EU regulator attitudes around the dual of labor & capital markets. Both are very dysfunctional in Europe, with labor probably slightly edging out in terms of dysfunction.
bobthepanda 8 hours ago [-]
thats also not helping, but it's not exactly a secret that German public infrastructure from roads to rails to electricity and whatnot are also all crumbling.
whimsicalism 8 hours ago [-]
it's hard to build infrastructure when you have dysfunctional labor markets & your tax base is declining in real terms.
daedrdev 45 minutes ago [-]
The black zero literally means that in real terms they have been decreasing government investment for years now.
FirmwareBurner 8 hours ago [-]
"You eventually run out of other peoples' money"
And wait till the EU starts paying it's own defense bills without the US, which is what it wants to do. But with money from where? Education? Healthcare? Welfare?
analog31 8 hours ago [-]
I'm thinking about things like life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, health care, violent crime, suicide, incarceration, traffic safety...
whimsicalism 8 hours ago [-]
In my view, yes - especially when you subset to native born populations. Many europeans are a proud people though so I understand this is contentious, regardless of what the numbers say.
thinkingtoilet 5 hours ago [-]
You say that like Germany as a country isn't doing well. I swear, people just stop thinking when it comes to things like this.
valenterry 4 hours ago [-]
If governments would (always) execute well then we could just let them do everything and it would be great. But they don't because there is no competition.
twothreeone 4 hours ago [-]
The money never goes to actually relevant or innovative projects, because there is a whole industry devoted to "proposal writing". Companies will literally bring dedicated teams together to sit in a room and think how they could possibly grift EU money, because they cannot meaningfully compete on the open market and need to fund 25-50% of their personnel costs through such programs.
Think Siemens, Orange S.A., Technikon, Philips N.V., T-Systems, but also (!) IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, McKinsey.
odiroot 9 hours ago [-]
Waiting eagerly for the first contracts to land at SAP/T-Mobile.
anigbrowl 9 hours ago [-]
Black_13 appears to be shadowbanned so I'm reproducing their comment here:
black_13 11 minutes ago [dead] | parent | context | unvouch | favorite | on: Germany creates 'super–high-tech ministry' for res...
The cynicism in these comments is telling, but misses crucial realities about Germany's capabilities and social achievements.
Yes, Germany creates bureaucracies. Yes, Dorothee Bär's digital infrastructure record isn't impressive. And yes, German bureaucracy can be stifling. But this myopic focus on administrative inefficiency overlooks Germany's formidable strengths.
Germany maintains world-class engineering and manufacturing excellence through their Mittelstand network while America has hollowed out its industrial base. German research institutions like Max Planck and Fraunhofer consistently produce breakthrough innovations in renewable energy, advanced materials, and chemical engineering. Their aerospace contributions through Airbus and DLR deliver real technological advances.
More importantly, Germany excels precisely where America falters. Their dual education system creates exceptional technical competence without requiring college degrees. Germans enjoy comprehensive public transportation infrastructure, universal healthcare without administrative bloat, and urban planning that prioritizes livability over speculation.
The results speak for themselves: Germans live significantly longer (81.1 years vs America's 76.4), face virtually no gun violence (2 deaths per million annually vs America's 120), and don't suffer from the manufactured scarcity that plagues American housing, healthcare, and education markets.
Critically, Germany isn't now teetering on becoming a police state. While America expands surveillance powers, militarizes police forces, and faces growing authoritarianism, Germany's post-war constitutional framework continues to prioritize civil liberties, privacy protections, and democratic norms. Their painful historical lessons have created institutional guardrails against authoritarianism that America increasingly lacks.
Let's be honest about who's posting these dismissive takes - primarily privileged tech workers disconnected from the material realities faced by average citizens. While you mock German bureaucracy from comfortable positions, their social systems deliver concrete benefits that many Americans can only dream of.
Germany's approach allows for longer, healthier lives with dramatically less precarity than what Americans experience. Their new ministry may face bureaucratic challenges, but it builds on foundations of technical excellence and social achievement that deserve genuine consideration rather than facile mockery.
ernst_klim 9 hours ago [-]
> comprehensive public transportation infrastructure, universal healthcare without administrative bloat, and urban planning that prioritizes livability over speculation.
This can't be further from the truth. This is probably written by an American, and US is a very car-centric, but German infrastructure is a shitshow.
Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy. I have a friend who is a cardiologist. He says that exactly half of his work time is paperwork. And not just paperwork, but German paperwork, where you manually type PDF fields one by one, then print, then sign, then scan and so on.
sz4kerto 8 hours ago [-]
As someone who lived in multiple rich countries in Europe, let me tell you that the German healthcare system is awesome. It has a lot of problems, but it's head and shoulders above many-many other countries. You can actually get care by a qualified doctor, while this is absolutely not self-evident even in rich countries like the United Kingdom, and let's not talk about CEE countries.
valenterry 4 hours ago [-]
How many years ago?
calmoo 7 hours ago [-]
I would disagree. German doctors regularly prescribe homeopathic medicine, misdiagnose patients and tell people they just need to drink tea, and also will not supply medicine when it is really needed. This is well researched.
Saying you can not get care by a qualified doctor in the UK is a completely false statement.
j-krieger 8 hours ago [-]
> This can't be further from the truth. This is probably written by an American, and US is a very car-centric, but German infrastructure is a shitshow.
I just know that this is a comment from a German person who has little experience with public transport in any non-top-class country. Yeah, it could be better, but it could also be so much worse.
> Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy
This I agree with.
ernst_klim 8 hours ago [-]
I lived in Russia, Georgia, few European countries. Even in Georgia trains are way more punctual, than in Germany. Moscow metro works like a Swiss-clock compared to U-Bahn/S-Bahn.
Maybe what you are talking about is true for some very pour Asian/African countries, but many middle-income countries have more reliable public transportation, than Berlin. Not to mention developed ones and China.
j-krieger 6 hours ago [-]
> I lived in Russia, Georgia, few European countries
I've been to Central America, Egypt, Istanbul, Sicily, Spain and many more candidates that take a more lax attitude to daily life. Their public transport could certainly be better.
> but many middle-income countries have more reliable public transportation, than Berlin
Berlin is not Germany. Berlin is badly run, constantly out of money (especially for infrastructure) and very different than the rest. Still, inner city public transport is generally reliable, if dirty and sometimes full of questionable people.
eli_gottlieb 8 hours ago [-]
>Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy. I have a friend who is a cardiologist. He says that exactly half of his work time is paperwork. And not just paperwork, but German paperwork, where you manually type PDF fields one by one, then print, then sign, then scan and so on.
Wait. That's exactly how paperwork has always worked for me in America. What am I missing?
calmoo 7 hours ago [-]
The difference is in Germany you print that PDF out from the institution's website, and then send it to them by mail.
twothreeone 4 hours ago [-]
Or you scan the printed form (which you filled out electronically), and send it by fax.
black_13 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
seertaak 9 hours ago [-]
Interesting comment, but Germany's much-vaunted Mittelstand is in its initial death throes. Key industries and IP are being auctioned off to the highest bidder, not the least, for lack of heirs. It isn't universally acknowledged, but the same processes that caused the US's manufacturing decay have been occurring in Germany; at roughly the same speed, but with a 30 year lag (since Agenda 2010) viz-a-vis the US.
Aldipower 9 hours ago [-]
I really dislike the Germany against America sentiment of this post. This is not how you bring arguments to the table.
Saying this a German.
dennis_jeeves2 8 hours ago [-]
>Black_13 appears to be shadowbanned so I'm reproducing their comment here:
Pity this happens, I was looking at his posts, and most of them seem to have a higher degree of original thought than most other HN posters.
calmoo 9 hours ago [-]
Having no gun violence and having a higher life expectancy than America is not something to be proud of and not a useful benchmark. This comment is a prime example of Germany's inability to take external criticism - it nearly always devolves into comparison with America. You know many non-americans also criticise the state of Germany currently?
stratocumulus0 9 minutes ago [-]
Having lived here for a bit over 5 years, I can say that Germans too often like to speak from the moral high ground. There are things that are sacred and indisputable, like opposition to nuclear energy. Try to complain about a strike in public services causing you inconvenience, and you will invariably get lectured on solidarity. I've seen people interrupting speakers at public events to "provide important context" that was nothing more than self-flattery from the interrupting person. I do believe in this country and think that it has way more upsides than downsides, but the people here could sure use a bit of humility.
j-krieger 6 hours ago [-]
> You know many non-americans also criticise the state of Germany currently
Germans are also masters at criticising Germany. You just read more defence online than what happens in real life.
Zigurd 9 hours ago [-]
/s?
calmoo 7 hours ago [-]
Not sure what could be interpreted as sarcasm in my comment. It is pretty direct and on the nose.
sockaddr 7 hours ago [-]
> Having no gun violence and having a higher life expectancy than America is not something to be proud of and not a useful benchmark
/s ?
calmoo 7 hours ago [-]
What I mean by this is - is that this is such a low bar - of not having rampant gun violence and short life expectancy, especially when correlating them with GDP. This should not be a point of pride or comparison to beat this bar. Most developed countries in the world achieve more than America on these metrics, therefore it's a useless benchmark.
slt2021 6 hours ago [-]
if America has gun violence, then Germany has car ramming into crowds violence, and both problems have similar roots
dennis_jeeves2 8 hours ago [-]
>Germans live significantly longer (81.1 years vs America's 76.4)
Got to point out a nuance here.
Americans living shorter are partly the result of America's success. An aggressive big pharma and a health care system that over medicates the population and give them bad advise ( eg nutrition) is one reason why they live less. Often more technology/business is not necessarily good. Germany's overall better outcome with result to life expectancy can be attributed to their incompetence/bureaucracy but certainly not a conscious decision to be better.
valenterry 4 hours ago [-]
> Germans enjoy comprehensive public transportation infrastructure, universal healthcare without administrative bloat
Tell me you have never lived in Germany without telling me...
sva_ 7 hours ago [-]
> Their dual education system creates exceptional technical competence without requiring college degrees.
Unless you do your Ausbildung in a job where you can learn mostly all the skills within a couple months, after which you'll just be shamelessly exploited by your employer for the remaining duration of it.
> Germans enjoy comprehensive public transportation infrastructure,
Yeah, our train systems are pretty cool (can reach most places.) But if your expectation is anything more than 'hopefully arrive by the end of day', you'll regularly be disappointed.
> and don't suffer from the manufactured scarcity that plagues American housing
Have you tried renting in any bigger city in the past 10 or so years?
> Critically, Germany isn't now teetering on becoming a police state. While America expands surveillance powers, militarizes police forces, and faces growing authoritarianism, Germany's post-war constitutional framework continues to prioritize civil liberties, privacy protections, and democratic norms.
I disagree with the claim that Germany is currently on a path strictly "prioritiz[ing] civil liberties, privacy protections, and democratic norms."
Not only did German politicians in 2021 broaden the scope of §188 StGB to include insults against politicians, even at the local level[1], the new coalition contract also has some pretty dystopian views on how to approach opinions/statements they categorize as 'disinformation'[2] (ministry of truth anyone? - ah nevermind, they sidestep that by letting NGOs do the dirty work for them.)
Pair that with the fact that they plan to (again) try to introduce data retention laws without cause[3], I do not personally believe that claiming we strictly prioritize civil liberties etc is a correct assessment of the overall situation here in Germany.
Overall I suspect the post has been written with the aid of LLM, I wonder who/why would do such a thing though. There's just something off about the tone.
> Have you tried renting in any bigger city in the past 10 or so years?
I am German myself and I get where you're coming from, but there are worlds between German rent prices and American or even London, Amsterdam or Dublin rent prices.
pjio 4 hours ago [-]
The title is strange: In german news there was nothing that sounded like "super hightech ministry" not even a "superhigh tech ministry". But the ministry for "education and research" got split, assigning education to the ministry for family, leaving more room for the research part which got an additional focus on technology.
slt2021 9 hours ago [-]
Germany has no national idea, they have no reason why an average burger should work his/her ass off competing with Chinese/American/Indian scientists and working 80 hr/week on cutting edge research.
Germans are smart and capable, but the German lifestyle is not for "super high tech" industry
fxtentacle 9 hours ago [-]
The people I know that do cutting-edge research mostly do it because it's fun. That might be hard to imagine, but if you have great (government-funded) local hackerspaces where you can meet others, talk to them and built stuff together, it becomes a viable free-time activity. For example, I can schedule a Prusa (FDM) / Form (SLA) / Fuse (SLS) print job remotely and then quickly walk there to pick it up. If I need custom sheet metal or wood, I'll bring a USB stick with the DXF and then walk. That kind of infrastructure massively cuts down on iteration times. Plus it's great to get feedback in-person by other tinkerers when you pick things up.
ernst_klim 8 hours ago [-]
That's all good and well, but the very time you would try to start selling your tinkering, or, God forbid, hire somebody - that's where the hell begins.
Being a self-employed is a living hell in Germany, as well as receiving any money outside of employment. Esp. if money are small (but > than hobby money, 500 euro iirc) and don't justify the hurdle of dealing with Finanzamt, tax pre-payment, possible regulations with upfront Formulars etc.
ChrisMarshallNY 9 hours ago [-]
I hope this works out (even if it's a net negative for the US). I have worked with German engineers, and have been quite impressed.
I sincerely wish Germany luck. They'd better do a good job of securing their IP, though...
bcye 9 hours ago [-]
What is the national idea of the other listed countries in comparison? Also: a "national idea" isn't the only reason people do cutting edge research.
slt2021 6 hours ago [-]
you need an idea in order to mobilize the energy of the population.
German passionary patriotism has been artificially subverted and shut down, and the nation instead has been flooded with non-Germanic elements, thus completely destroying the very definition of German.
Ask any German on the street, and nobody will be able to answer: What defines being a German, who are the Germans, what is their history, and what awaits German people in the future.
Complete void of any ideology, national idea, any energy that could propel the nation in the great leap forward.
tene80i 9 hours ago [-]
What’s your proposal? Give up?
ernst_klim 8 hours ago [-]
Germany is actively killing innovation. I propose to stop for starters.
Tho when the median voter is 55 and national motto is "that's how it was always done" and "Pensions are secure" - I don't put much hope. I still remember the outcry when the digital health cards were introduced.
mk89 7 hours ago [-]
Not sure how Germany is actively killing innovation to be honest.
Your other points are more or less true, I just like to think that people complain a lot and media obviously makes it worse.
Digital health cards, online tax declaration, etc. These things did happen. People complained, but these decisions were not reverted. That's the most important.
ernst_klim 7 hours ago [-]
> Not sure how Germany is actively killing innovation to be honest
By many things at once: Datenschutz, (over- and premature) regulations, bureaucracy, laws favoring old ways (e.g. broadcasting licenses for streamers), active sabotage from workers who don't want to learn things (and can't be fired) etc.
But all stems from risk averseness and active unwillingness to learn new ways.
As you say, (some) things did happened, but way too slow and way too little. Compared to its peers or especially developing countries German Digitalisierung is a joke, a not so funny one.
j-krieger 8 hours ago [-]
We should stop treating any kind of patriotism and German culture like it is from the devil.
slt2021 6 hours ago [-]
I would say Germany needs to redefine what patriotism is.
It currently has too many dual passport holders, and people with dual loyalties who do not put the long-term interests of Germany first, but rather consider Germany only as a source of welfare to extract and transfer elsewhere
eli_gottlieb 8 hours ago [-]
Sounds like you kinda just want an excuse to vote AfD without pointing to an element of their policy platform you think the rest of us should support too.
6 hours ago [-]
j-krieger 6 hours ago [-]
Q.E.D
(Just for the record I don't vote AfD. I do like being German and I like what little culture we have left. You can be patriotic and at the same time left leaning.)
2 hours ago [-]
pixelpoet 6 hours ago [-]
Gruß aus Frankfurt, you really couldn't have proven his point any better if you tried.
Some countries are approximately 50% national flag by surface area, fist pumping and chanting the country's name at every opportunity despite being run by people making Nazi salutes, but "it's okay to like your country's culture" is instantly equated with Nazism? Come on man...
slt2021 6 hours ago [-]
people like you are the reason for the downfall of Germany as a nation
eli_gottlieb 8 hours ago [-]
You mean as opposed to the American national idea of "work or starve, bitch"?
bpodgursky 8 hours ago [-]
If you ever visited America, it would immediately strike you that no Americans, rich or poor, black or white, are starving. Frankly, we could all use a little more starving.
pmags 5 hours ago [-]
The actual data about food insecurity from the USDA tells quite a different story:
In 2023...13.5 percent (18.0 million households) were food insecure. Food-insecure households (those with low and very low food security) had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources...5.1 percent of U.S. households (6.8 million households) had very low food security...
Coincidentally, the collection of such detailed and useful data is at risk from the indiscriminate USDA firings.
marcusverus 4 hours ago [-]
So it's a totally subjective metric which measures whether anyone claims to have "had difficulty" buying food at least once during a calendar year. Not that they didn't get enough food--just that they had to exert effort to get it.
This is not evidence that people are going hungry, though it is clearly designed to give that impression.
pmags 4 hours ago [-]
Talk about a bad faith response. No counter data presented. Just deny and distract.
Here's collaborating trends for the same calendar year:
Feeding America estimates more than 50 million people received charitable food assistance sometime in 2023
I'm guessing you'll respond that charities that feed people have a vested interest and are not to be trusted... (yes, I'm aware of cases of charities committing fraud; no there is no evidence that is the norm). Probably again without presenting data to support your assertion that there are no Americans who go hungry.
I'm curious what actually obtainable data you would accept as a counterfactual to your statement/belief?
In the end Technicolor / Thomson, Exalead, SAP, France Telecom (Orange) got most of the funding if I remember right. Other than a few university, museum digitalisation projects nothing consumer facing ever so the light of day.
kazinator 9 hours ago [-]
Cool, scientists persecuted in the USA can now free to Germany. Kind of like Einstein & Co, but exact opposite direction.
sunshine-o 9 hours ago [-]
> A new ministry for research, technology, and aerospace will be formed, and the education portfolio will be taken over by the current ministry for family, seniors, women, and youth.
So I guess Germany is one of those countries which reorganize their government on a brainstorming board by just throwing up concepts. And then it takes years for all the bureaucracy to move around and get back to work.
> Germany needs a new alignment of defense policy and research policy, but “we do not yet know how to do this,”
I learned in middle school that you were once really good at it. There is also a consensus it got quickly out of control and destroyed Europe.
All of this sound more like an Onion or Babylon Bee piece...
guywithahat 9 hours ago [-]
The more I read about this, the more it feels like a VW bailout. If you want innovation, make it easier to start up and shut down research companies, you don't need a new ministry to hand out taxpayer money to companies.
dpc_01234 7 hours ago [-]
European research and innovation funding is absurdly gamed and just money wasted.
I personally know people who received funding from EU innovation funds, thought more than 10 years ago. It was graded by bureaucrats that had no idea about anything and graded it based on keyword matching (basically like tech recruiting works). It was absurd.
flanked-evergl 8 hours ago [-]
And the win goes to China, as always. Well played.
holowoodman 8 hours ago [-]
> “Our goal is that the world’s first fusion reactor should be realized in Germany,”
This will never happen. At some point they will notice that fusion is something with "nuclear" and "atoms" and they will immediately jump to "scary", "dangerous" and "verboten".
Ridius 8 hours ago [-]
Germany is home to one of the most promising Fusion projects - "Wendelstein 7-X
"
holowoodman 8 hours ago [-]
Germany also was home to some of the most cutting edge fission research. Otto Hahn (the ship, not the guy), THTR-300, EPR, SNR-300, ...
All gone now.
j-krieger 6 hours ago [-]
Of course, there is more fusion research now.
j-krieger 6 hours ago [-]
They are also a large supporter of ITER.
9 hours ago [-]
coolgoose 9 hours ago [-]
No fax ? :P
renewiltord 10 hours ago [-]
Nothing surprising about Germany excelling at its strongest fields: creating ministries.
Accretive policy is strong there and in their Anglo-Saxon descendants.
noworriesnate 9 hours ago [-]
On the flip side we Anglo-Saxons (and Germany's descendants in general) also invented a lot of cool stuff: airplanes, trains, cars, tractors, spacecraft, even hot air balloons!
renewiltord 9 hours ago [-]
Without a doubt not the only characteristic. Simply a characteristic of these cultures today. e.g. obsession with environment to the degree of actively harming it (opposing nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal; and dense housing) is primarily an Anglophone concern specifically UK/US/Aus. And those countries are collectively responsible for a lot of innovation.
Seems to be a truth: inventiveness moving to moribund navel-gazing.
FirmwareBurner 9 hours ago [-]
The Greeks and Romans probably invented even more useful stuff of modern civilization, the problem is past glory doesn't pay present day bills, unless you're running a museum.
FirmwareBurner 9 hours ago [-]
Excelling at creating paperwork... except now digitally. AUTOSAR is may favorite German software innovation. /s
That's the curse in Europe. Every European country has it's own ministry of digital innovation who's role is the grift of allocating taxpayer money to the right politically connected pockets while pretending to do innovation. Case in point, German fiber optic infrastructure is still lightyears behind Romania despite much higher costs. Means, somebody in Germany is making good money form that, even if there's nothing to show for.
Meanwhile the actuality innovative companies in Europe get real VC money from the US, then get incorporated in the US and become American companies, then EU has the audacity to complain about lacking tech sovereignty.
tommica 9 hours ago [-]
Yep, had a coworker who was looking for financing in a EU country, but very few investor options were available, and mostly for a low amount of money, only enough for a few months. He had to go to UK to find people with deep enough pockets.
WorkerBee28474 9 hours ago [-]
You can replace 'Europe' with 'Canada' and everything said here will still be true.
9 hours ago [-]
ericyd 9 hours ago [-]
What's with the mis-matched hyphens/dashes?
piombisallow 5 hours ago [-]
Just one more ministry bro, I beg you, just one more ministry and we solve European growth, a couple more bureaucrats, c'mon
ulrischa 8 hours ago [-]
This will not work. Germany is totally driven by lawyers. No room for new ideas. Everybody is doing ass covering instead of working together building something great
8 hours ago [-]
gillesjacobs 8 hours ago [-]
I need an LLM in my fax machine.
nixass 8 hours ago [-]
> also plans to woo scientists from abroad
but also god forbid you arrive to Germany with <C1 German.
ABH office is waiting with guns fully loaded
arghandugh 8 hours ago [-]
This is a militarization effort to counter Mad King Trump who has overthrown the USA and is threatening the global order for his own sick pleasure.
onecommentman 8 hours ago [-]
The phrase “super-high-tech ministry” doesn’t sound like the correctly nuanced translation of Super-Hightech-Ministeriums. In English, it begs the question whether they are really serious — why isn’t it “super-duper-high-tech” or “ultra-high-tech” or “hyper-high-tech”? Calling something “super-X” in English sounds a little marketingspeak-clumsy and opens you up to these jibes.
notorandit 9 hours ago [-]
They need to call Mrs. Merkel back.
black_13 9 hours ago [-]
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LargoLasskhyfv 9 hours ago [-]
cringe
johndoe0815 10 hours ago [-]
And it will probably be headed by one of the most incompetent and corrupt politicians they were able to find. Disgusting.
pmags 10 hours ago [-]
Evidence? Citations? Suggested reading?
ndr42 9 hours ago [-]
The CSU has a history of putting people in charge that do not benefit germany but bavaria (the only part of germany where the party CSU is active), e.g. Andreas Scheuer [1][2].
Notable recent examples of corruption are the Maskenaffäre [4] or Julia Klöckner and Nestlé ("Julia Klöckner and Nestlé show how the greasy closeness between politics and business can go too far" [5]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Scheuer: "Scheuer's ministry is said to have broken budgetary and public procurement law when concluding the multi-billion dollar contracts with the operators and "deliberately deceived" the Bundestag about the real costs of the car toll."
[2] Söder (party leader of CSU) said about Scheuer: "I don't know not many ministers that bring so much money to bavaria as Andreas Scheuer" [3]
[3] German: "Bei allem, was der ein oder andere kritisiert an dem Andi Scheuer: Ich kenne wenige Minister, die so viel Geld nach Bayern holen, wie der Andi Scheuer. Auch das muss man einfach mal in der Bilanz ehrlicherweise bitte nach draußen sagen."
This ministry will not be lead by any of these people. Their replacement isn't that much better competency wise, but there is no corruption case yet.
Your source 3 is not saying what you think it does. State government can apply for federal funding. Söder and his ilk have mastered this. There is nothing corrupt here.
ndr42 8 hours ago [-]
I read a commemt in this discussion that Dorothee Bär has a case of corruption where she was employing her husband.
„Source 3“: Well, if you are a minister for infrastructure in germany it is not part of our job description to bring money to bavaria. Maybe my definition of corruption is of but the minister has some saying in how to use its funds and if your home state benefits more than other parts of germany… I would call this a form of corruption
j-krieger 6 hours ago [-]
> Dorothee Bär has a case of corruption where she was employing her husband
That is an unfortunate case of nepotism that happens in the entire political spectrum. I was especially disappointed of the Greens setting up cozy positions for friends and family at the end of their term. I really thought they'd do better..
> Well, if you are a minister for infrastructure in germany it is not part of our job description to bring money to bavaria
Why not? If you think Bavaria is the largest net benefactor of this measure you might as well do so. It's one out of many possible strategies.
> Maybe my definition of corruption is of
I think it's something else but I can't think of a word.
johannes1234321 10 hours ago [-]
I don't think grandparent's characterization matches. Typical career oriented "conservative" politician.
> The agreement stipulates that the CSU will be in charge of the “super–high-tech ministry,” as party leader Markus Söder called it in a press conference this week. The CSU has not proposed a minister yet, but it’s widely expected that Dorothee Bär, who was in charge of “digital infrastructure” in previous governments under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, will get the nod.
Sounds like her only non-political experience is working as a journalist.
It's arguable that the "corrupt" part was scrubbed off Wikipedia. But her credentials to lead a research / technology / aerospace ministry certainly sound underwhelming.
johndoe0815 9 hours ago [-]
German only, sorry. Both are reputable news outlets (though the Spiegel has gone down quite a bit in recent years IMHO).
She hired her future husband as an employee until immediately before their wedding. This position was paid by the federal German parliament, i.e. the taxpayer. It's illegal to hire a relative in such a position.
pmags 9 hours ago [-]
Thanks. Having read the (auto-translated) article in Der Spiegel, I agree that Bär's prior behavior suggests nepotism.
chopin 9 hours ago [-]
It's CSU, of course it is.
Not that other parties are better...
cbmask 9 hours ago [-]
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9 hours ago [-]
_dain_ 9 hours ago [-]
>who was in charge of “digital infrastructure” in previous governments
germany's digital infrastructure is a global laughing stock, this doesn't bode well.
DeepSeaTortoise 9 hours ago [-]
You're claiming this, but average German internet speed has but recently surpassed Latvia's, easily beats Paraguay and the Philippines and is closing in on Montenegro and Barbados.
The recent rapid improvements even diminished Romania's lead to less than 250%.
Of course this is only up to the Telekom speedtest server, beyond that nearly all of Germany's 50-100Tbps get funneled through 362Gbps of interconnections onto the open internet.
johannes1234321 9 hours ago [-]
That's more a mistranslation of the role.
Digital infrastructure was part of traffic ministry.
Her role was coordinating the government's mostly internal digital strategy. Thus reviewing new bills, looking at processes inside the administration etc. most of the work outside the public eye.
Rendered at 06:16:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It'll probably be very German, meaning overly bureaucratic. But the basic idea of financing R&D in small companies to grow them more competitive seems legit to me.
As an example of what was funded by similar German government grants, you can look at voize, which is (by now) also a YC company: https://en.voize.de/uber-uns
EDIT: Here's some German info on the 1.98 mio € research grant from early 2022 (meaning it was awarded shortly before they joined the W22 YC batch): https://www.interaktive-technologien.de/projekte/pysa
Anyway, Fraunhofer gets recurring tax funding. What voize got is a one-off research grant to a group of companies:
- voize
- Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin (a medical university)
- Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH, Berlin (a government AI research lab)
- Connext Communication GmbH, Paderborn (a tech company)
- Kleeblatt Pflegeheime gGmbH, Ludwigsburg (a retirement home, i.e. potential end user)
- Pflegewohnhaus am Waldkrankenhaus gGmbH, Berlin (another retirement home)
For this grant type, it's quite common that you pay the inventors, some assistant companies, some researchers, and some end users a lump sum to force them all to work together on commercializing the invention.
https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/about-fraunhofer/profile-struct...
At least that's how it is in the US. I'm unsure how different, if at all, it is in Germany.
Everything that isn't dross in the computer world is either a well designed standard, or a well designed algorithm. If the German government adopted a sensible standard for government documents, for example, and mandated that all documents must be saved in it, that would already make a huge difference.
I'd like to see more innovation in general and if this leads to that its good. But I don't personally think that innovation needs to happen in Germany, so long as it happens somewhere and Germans can do what they do best with it.
Hmm... So if people struggle in life and have live from hand to mouth in multiple jobs to support their family and loved ones, they are more innovative?
Extremely thick irony here
You must be hanging out in a different part of the computer world.
What I see is that most standards reflect evolved systems, and those standards usually have many amendments. Most algorithms are generation descendants of broken predecessors. I love hearing about a singular talent coming up with something new and getting the world to listen, but the story is usually way messier than that.
They still have the automotive / electrical engineering mindset on computers and software. Software in Germany is built to achieve a means to an end. It is never the end goal itself.
Well, that's how it should be, I don't write software to worship any software deities, I use it to get a job done. If you don't you end up with that 700 dollar useless gadget that was basically a python API wrapper in a box that everyone rightfully made fun of.
We can do a lot of things better in software in Germany but treating it as an engineering discipline is a good thing, I think even the US is probably past the peak of the zero interest free money toy product phase and people are focusing more on real industry again.
Technology coasted for a few decades gaining public’s trust as an unquestionable improvement over the past. That reputation is wearing out faster than I’d like to admit.
I hear from friends and family that SV big tech are increasingly equated with surveilence, credit card leaks, and destructive games of billionaires detached from reality. I had a long potluck talk with a stranger that was convinced ChatGPT is analogous to another crypto scam. It blew my mind and opened my eyes that could be a popular opinion.
I agree Germans are less susceptible to SV bullshit artists, but they also miss out on the upside for game changing ideas. Whether this is a net negative or net positive is yet to be determined. Up to this point, it has been Germany’s financial loss to over index on the engineeriness. Maybe it is America’s loss to over index on the financial outcomes and the truly world changing ideas and those very same ideas can be a net negative. I would have said 2 months ago that you would be hard pressed to find people on this message board who would agree with the latter, but I think that may have changed significantly recently.
Almost all the science fiction and cybernetic work of the last 75 years came either out of the Eastern block, or out of the US. There is basically no German sci fi vision, and there is extreme reluctance to speculative, big picture thinking as it is pursued in Silicon Valley. Software companies grow quickly and need a very different approach. Silicon Valley mostly understands this scaling aspect and winner take all markets really well. German investors are cheap and extremely risk averse, I tried to build a software company in Germany and it is hard.
While a lot of the current AI work was also done in Germany, e.g. by Schmidhuber, Germans are stuck in their business model. I recommend Münchau's book "Kaput" (or one of his podcast interviews) on how poorly Germans have adapted to the non-industrial aspects of a modern economy (read: "services"). I really hope that more tech founder thinking like Benz, Bosch or Siemens returns to Germany in a modern form. But I don't see it yet, and Germans are still super reactive and conservative to larger changes. The Greens tried to think a bit out of the box, and were heavily punished for it. In general there is basically no political representation for building a new successful economy. At best there is this nice little narrative about the long established "Mittelstand", which has produce almost zero software companies. The first step right now would be to own the idea of the EU, and wanting to win instead of complaining.
What Germans can do is create layers of bureaucracy.
Nobody's stopping a local mid-market manufacturer from automating workflows. Or hindering a utility company from offering a better service process.
The problem is corporate leadership.
German companies tend to be run by people who are inflexible, uninspired, and cheap. Maybe it's in the culture. Compare this to Austria, where there's a cultural flair for the dramatic (and therefore an eagerness to stand out, even if it's weird) or Switzerland where enterprises, public or private, are not afraid to place big bets.
It absolutely is. Try to open a company in Germany. Then try to do your tax. Then try to close your company.
After that, let's talk again about bureaucracy.
Oh, and the new government just announced plans that non-employeed people (freelancers, business owners, ...) are now forced to pay into national pension (with few exceptions). And don't get me started on that one. Just as an example, national pension charges based on your income. But they have a different way to calculate income than the tax office.
Let me say it in other words if it's not clear yet: If someone is practically unable to do all the above without an accountant then the bureaucracy is absolutely out of hands.
Americans constantly complain about the tax system and, like them or not in practice, a lot of US citizens on both sides of the aisle believe in one of the stated goals of DOGE (previously named the US Digital Service).
No, and in the context of the thread I care little about the US. This thread is about Germany and is specifically about "they [the companies] are drowning in bureaucracy" and "The problem is not the bureaucracy". And my post was a response to that. The US might be worse (I doubt it) but it has basically no relevance imo.
Cheap as in no investments in people or software quality. Salaries are also not competitive in a lot of places.
Disregard for the user and disregard for usability.
Unfortunately most software shops locked in their customers and the lack of any technical merit pays well and is disconnected from product quality.
Only lots of bankruptcies might help. I have nothing but disdain for these people in leadership.
I've surely not seen all but I've seen enough. It's that bad.
The biggest issue with German bureaucracy is that it's largely paper-based and has little to no automation. In many cases, digitalisation when it happens just means sending documents digitally instead of delivering them during an in-person appointment. This leads to very long processing times that are constrained by available labour.
I'm no expert by any means, but have you ever actually worked with Germans?
The existence of Betriebsräte (Workers' Councils, as implemented in Germany), while not necessarily 'bad', comes with a mountain of bureaucracy...
Betriebsräte are actually a really sane measure once you think about it. And the more intelligent managers take them as an asset.
You took in my opinion unfortunately the worst example you could. Unions are by definition bureaucratic because they need to be...
Can you call out with some examples for those of us unfamiliar with those 'big bets'?
Switzerland sits between Germany, Italy, and France, and was getting choked by road traffic, so voters have approved the largest tunnels in the world to get goods around and through Switzerland without using roads.
The problem is definitely bureaucracy. Any German founder will agree with this.
Or having to carry cash coz a lot of places don't even give you the option to pay by card (even though this seems to come to an end, hello 2025!)
I had to contact customer support to send me one... by post. They only activate and send eSIMs by mail. This will take another week.
I would be surprised if you're talking about an eSIM service that give you a phone number.
There's a saying for that in German involving "feeding trough" and "pigs".
but first regulated to death
a) don’t fund risky things
b) don’t believe Europe can create unicorns so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy for their investments
c) try to cash out too quickly from potentially huge businesses
d) valuations are half the investment for double the equity, so of course the companies have half the runway and half the upside.
Do you even disagree that investors try to take a larger equity position in companies in the EU than in the US?
There sure would like though. What I've followed in the Horizon program was a fixation of chasing "last years" technology.
Problem was , that for all those funding programmes they had quite stingent company requirements which stopped startups and small companies from having a go at it. Larger companies had no issue navigating this process and chewing the cash without actually delivering good or innovative products.
[1] https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/03/27/germanys-rea... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_economic_crisis_%282022...
https://www.wsj.com/world/europeans-poorer-inflation-economy...
For example there is increasing consensus that Merkel's "black-zero" budget requirements set the stage for today's collapsing German infrastructure and lack of productivity growth due to decreased public investment.
And wait till the EU starts paying it's own defense bills without the US, which is what it wants to do. But with money from where? Education? Healthcare? Welfare?
Think Siemens, Orange S.A., Technikon, Philips N.V., T-Systems, but also (!) IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, McKinsey.
black_13 11 minutes ago [dead] | parent | context | unvouch | favorite | on: Germany creates 'super–high-tech ministry' for res...
The cynicism in these comments is telling, but misses crucial realities about Germany's capabilities and social achievements. Yes, Germany creates bureaucracies. Yes, Dorothee Bär's digital infrastructure record isn't impressive. And yes, German bureaucracy can be stifling. But this myopic focus on administrative inefficiency overlooks Germany's formidable strengths.
Germany maintains world-class engineering and manufacturing excellence through their Mittelstand network while America has hollowed out its industrial base. German research institutions like Max Planck and Fraunhofer consistently produce breakthrough innovations in renewable energy, advanced materials, and chemical engineering. Their aerospace contributions through Airbus and DLR deliver real technological advances.
More importantly, Germany excels precisely where America falters. Their dual education system creates exceptional technical competence without requiring college degrees. Germans enjoy comprehensive public transportation infrastructure, universal healthcare without administrative bloat, and urban planning that prioritizes livability over speculation.
The results speak for themselves: Germans live significantly longer (81.1 years vs America's 76.4), face virtually no gun violence (2 deaths per million annually vs America's 120), and don't suffer from the manufactured scarcity that plagues American housing, healthcare, and education markets.
Critically, Germany isn't now teetering on becoming a police state. While America expands surveillance powers, militarizes police forces, and faces growing authoritarianism, Germany's post-war constitutional framework continues to prioritize civil liberties, privacy protections, and democratic norms. Their painful historical lessons have created institutional guardrails against authoritarianism that America increasingly lacks.
Let's be honest about who's posting these dismissive takes - primarily privileged tech workers disconnected from the material realities faced by average citizens. While you mock German bureaucracy from comfortable positions, their social systems deliver concrete benefits that many Americans can only dream of.
Germany's approach allows for longer, healthier lives with dramatically less precarity than what Americans experience. Their new ministry may face bureaucratic challenges, but it builds on foundations of technical excellence and social achievement that deserve genuine consideration rather than facile mockery.
This can't be further from the truth. This is probably written by an American, and US is a very car-centric, but German infrastructure is a shitshow.
Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy. I have a friend who is a cardiologist. He says that exactly half of his work time is paperwork. And not just paperwork, but German paperwork, where you manually type PDF fields one by one, then print, then sign, then scan and so on.
Saying you can not get care by a qualified doctor in the UK is a completely false statement.
I just know that this is a comment from a German person who has little experience with public transport in any non-top-class country. Yeah, it could be better, but it could also be so much worse.
> Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy
This I agree with.
Maybe what you are talking about is true for some very pour Asian/African countries, but many middle-income countries have more reliable public transportation, than Berlin. Not to mention developed ones and China.
I've been to Central America, Egypt, Istanbul, Sicily, Spain and many more candidates that take a more lax attitude to daily life. Their public transport could certainly be better.
> but many middle-income countries have more reliable public transportation, than Berlin
Berlin is not Germany. Berlin is badly run, constantly out of money (especially for infrastructure) and very different than the rest. Still, inner city public transport is generally reliable, if dirty and sometimes full of questionable people.
Wait. That's exactly how paperwork has always worked for me in America. What am I missing?
Pity this happens, I was looking at his posts, and most of them seem to have a higher degree of original thought than most other HN posters.
Germans are also masters at criticising Germany. You just read more defence online than what happens in real life.
/s ?
Got to point out a nuance here.
Americans living shorter are partly the result of America's success. An aggressive big pharma and a health care system that over medicates the population and give them bad advise ( eg nutrition) is one reason why they live less. Often more technology/business is not necessarily good. Germany's overall better outcome with result to life expectancy can be attributed to their incompetence/bureaucracy but certainly not a conscious decision to be better.
Tell me you have never lived in Germany without telling me...
Unless you do your Ausbildung in a job where you can learn mostly all the skills within a couple months, after which you'll just be shamelessly exploited by your employer for the remaining duration of it.
> Germans enjoy comprehensive public transportation infrastructure,
Yeah, our train systems are pretty cool (can reach most places.) But if your expectation is anything more than 'hopefully arrive by the end of day', you'll regularly be disappointed.
> and don't suffer from the manufactured scarcity that plagues American housing
Have you tried renting in any bigger city in the past 10 or so years?
> Critically, Germany isn't now teetering on becoming a police state. While America expands surveillance powers, militarizes police forces, and faces growing authoritarianism, Germany's post-war constitutional framework continues to prioritize civil liberties, privacy protections, and democratic norms.
I disagree with the claim that Germany is currently on a path strictly "prioritiz[ing] civil liberties, privacy protections, and democratic norms."
Not only did German politicians in 2021 broaden the scope of §188 StGB to include insults against politicians, even at the local level[1], the new coalition contract also has some pretty dystopian views on how to approach opinions/statements they categorize as 'disinformation'[2] (ministry of truth anyone? - ah nevermind, they sidestep that by letting NGOs do the dirty work for them.)
Pair that with the fact that they plan to (again) try to introduce data retention laws without cause[3], I do not personally believe that claiming we strictly prioritize civil liberties etc is a correct assessment of the overall situation here in Germany.
Overall I suspect the post has been written with the aid of LLM, I wonder who/why would do such a thing though. There's just something off about the tone.
1. https://www.buzer.de/gesetz/6165/al144303-0.htm
2. https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/kampf-g...
3. http://golem.de/news/koalitionsvertrag-bundesdigitalminister...
I am German myself and I get where you're coming from, but there are worlds between German rent prices and American or even London, Amsterdam or Dublin rent prices.
Germans are smart and capable, but the German lifestyle is not for "super high tech" industry
Being a self-employed is a living hell in Germany, as well as receiving any money outside of employment. Esp. if money are small (but > than hobby money, 500 euro iirc) and don't justify the hurdle of dealing with Finanzamt, tax pre-payment, possible regulations with upfront Formulars etc.
I sincerely wish Germany luck. They'd better do a good job of securing their IP, though...
German passionary patriotism has been artificially subverted and shut down, and the nation instead has been flooded with non-Germanic elements, thus completely destroying the very definition of German.
Ask any German on the street, and nobody will be able to answer: What defines being a German, who are the Germans, what is their history, and what awaits German people in the future.
Complete void of any ideology, national idea, any energy that could propel the nation in the great leap forward.
Tho when the median voter is 55 and national motto is "that's how it was always done" and "Pensions are secure" - I don't put much hope. I still remember the outcry when the digital health cards were introduced.
Your other points are more or less true, I just like to think that people complain a lot and media obviously makes it worse.
Digital health cards, online tax declaration, etc. These things did happen. People complained, but these decisions were not reverted. That's the most important.
By many things at once: Datenschutz, (over- and premature) regulations, bureaucracy, laws favoring old ways (e.g. broadcasting licenses for streamers), active sabotage from workers who don't want to learn things (and can't be fired) etc.
But all stems from risk averseness and active unwillingness to learn new ways.
As you say, (some) things did happened, but way too slow and way too little. Compared to its peers or especially developing countries German Digitalisierung is a joke, a not so funny one.
(Just for the record I don't vote AfD. I do like being German and I like what little culture we have left. You can be patriotic and at the same time left leaning.)
Some countries are approximately 50% national flag by surface area, fist pumping and chanting the country's name at every opportunity despite being run by people making Nazi salutes, but "it's okay to like your country's culture" is instantly equated with Nazism? Come on man...
https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1098...
In 2023...13.5 percent (18.0 million households) were food insecure. Food-insecure households (those with low and very low food security) had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources...5.1 percent of U.S. households (6.8 million households) had very low food security...
Coincidentally, the collection of such detailed and useful data is at risk from the indiscriminate USDA firings.
This is not evidence that people are going hungry, though it is clearly designed to give that impression.
Here's collaborating trends for the same calendar year:
https://www.feedingamerica.org/research/charitable-food-assi...
Feeding America estimates more than 50 million people received charitable food assistance sometime in 2023
I'm guessing you'll respond that charities that feed people have a vested interest and are not to be trusted... (yes, I'm aware of cases of charities committing fraud; no there is no evidence that is the norm). Probably again without presenting data to support your assertion that there are no Americans who go hungry.
I'm curious what actually obtainable data you would accept as a counterfactual to your statement/belief?
In the end Technicolor / Thomson, Exalead, SAP, France Telecom (Orange) got most of the funding if I remember right. Other than a few university, museum digitalisation projects nothing consumer facing ever so the light of day.
So I guess Germany is one of those countries which reorganize their government on a brainstorming board by just throwing up concepts. And then it takes years for all the bureaucracy to move around and get back to work.
> Germany needs a new alignment of defense policy and research policy, but “we do not yet know how to do this,”
I learned in middle school that you were once really good at it. There is also a consensus it got quickly out of control and destroyed Europe.
All of this sound more like an Onion or Babylon Bee piece...
[1] Wikipedian Protester:
https://xkcd.com/285/
This will never happen. At some point they will notice that fusion is something with "nuclear" and "atoms" and they will immediately jump to "scary", "dangerous" and "verboten".
All gone now.
Accretive policy is strong there and in their Anglo-Saxon descendants.
Seems to be a truth: inventiveness moving to moribund navel-gazing.
That's the curse in Europe. Every European country has it's own ministry of digital innovation who's role is the grift of allocating taxpayer money to the right politically connected pockets while pretending to do innovation. Case in point, German fiber optic infrastructure is still lightyears behind Romania despite much higher costs. Means, somebody in Germany is making good money form that, even if there's nothing to show for.
Meanwhile the actuality innovative companies in Europe get real VC money from the US, then get incorporated in the US and become American companies, then EU has the audacity to complain about lacking tech sovereignty.
but also god forbid you arrive to Germany with <C1 German. ABH office is waiting with guns fully loaded
Notable recent examples of corruption are the Maskenaffäre [4] or Julia Klöckner and Nestlé ("Julia Klöckner and Nestlé show how the greasy closeness between politics and business can go too far" [5]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Scheuer: "Scheuer's ministry is said to have broken budgetary and public procurement law when concluding the multi-billion dollar contracts with the operators and "deliberately deceived" the Bundestag about the real costs of the car toll."
[2] Söder (party leader of CSU) said about Scheuer: "I don't know not many ministers that bring so much money to bavaria as Andreas Scheuer" [3]
[3] German: "Bei allem, was der ein oder andere kritisiert an dem Andi Scheuer: Ich kenne wenige Minister, die so viel Geld nach Bayern holen, wie der Andi Scheuer. Auch das muss man einfach mal in der Bilanz ehrlicherweise bitte nach draußen sagen."
[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maskenaffäre
5] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/julia-kloeckner-und-nestle-ze...
Your source 3 is not saying what you think it does. State government can apply for federal funding. Söder and his ilk have mastered this. There is nothing corrupt here.
„Source 3“: Well, if you are a minister for infrastructure in germany it is not part of our job description to bring money to bavaria. Maybe my definition of corruption is of but the minister has some saying in how to use its funds and if your home state benefits more than other parts of germany… I would call this a form of corruption
That is an unfortunate case of nepotism that happens in the entire political spectrum. I was especially disappointed of the Greens setting up cozy positions for friends and family at the end of their term. I really thought they'd do better..
> Well, if you are a minister for infrastructure in germany it is not part of our job description to bring money to bavaria
Why not? If you think Bavaria is the largest net benefactor of this measure you might as well do so. It's one out of many possible strategies.
> Maybe my definition of corruption is of
I think it's something else but I can't think of a word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothee_B%C3%A4r
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothee_B%C3%A4r
Sounds like her only non-political experience is working as a journalist.
It's arguable that the "corrupt" part was scrubbed off Wikipedia. But her credentials to lead a research / technology / aerospace ministry certainly sound underwhelming.
https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-04/baer-csu-geh... https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/csu-politikerin-d...
She hired her future husband as an employee until immediately before their wedding. This position was paid by the federal German parliament, i.e. the taxpayer. It's illegal to hire a relative in such a position.
Not that other parties are better...
germany's digital infrastructure is a global laughing stock, this doesn't bode well.
The recent rapid improvements even diminished Romania's lead to less than 250%.
Of course this is only up to the Telekom speedtest server, beyond that nearly all of Germany's 50-100Tbps get funneled through 362Gbps of interconnections onto the open internet.
Digital infrastructure was part of traffic ministry.
Her role was coordinating the government's mostly internal digital strategy. Thus reviewing new bills, looking at processes inside the administration etc. most of the work outside the public eye.