The lights were all out, the corridors were deserted. Only one computer screen was still glowing at Freiburg’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Newly-arrived American academic Kristen Ghodsee was working late in her office. Then there was a knock at the door, and in came the institute’s director.



“He wanted to know if there was something wrong,” remembers Ghodsee, 49, who is professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Ghodsee replied she was fine, but the director looked at his watch and shook his head. It was 17:30. Why on earth would she still be working? “It was almost like he was chastising me,” the professor recalls of the conversation during a research sabbatical back in 2014. “Like: ‘You're in Germany now, go home!’”

What seemed perfectly normal to the American, working after hours, was inconceivable to the German. After all, it was Feierabend, a German term which refers both to the end of the working day and the act of switching off from work entirely.

Down time is taken very seriously in Europe’s biggest economy. That’s why, when the European Union introduced mandatory work and rest periods back in 2003, the Germans embraced the chance to enshrine their sacrosanct work-life balance in law.

An uninterrupted 11-hour break every 24 hours was guaranteed for all workers, bar a few exceptions. All EU member states adopted the rule, but the German Working Hours Act allowed fewer exceptions than elsewhere.