Great Opening Ceremony for Europe’s Longest Building

A photo of the building the night before. It stretches many kilometers through Berlin.

(Berlin, April 1) This morning I had the honor to attend the opening ceremony for a new warehouse of the federal ministry of education. This building, situated near to the Janowitzbrücke in the heart of Berlin, is a marvel of modern architecture. It is considered the longest building in Europe, stretching many miles through the city. It was built with the most comprehensive sustainability standards; it will create its own electricity for air-conditioning and lighting with wind turbines and solar panels.
From April 1^st on, the "Wortstock" named building will be the first ever storage place for German compound nouns. These nouns are composed of many smaller nouns, and together they create a new meaning. Some are valued throughout the world for its poetry; many are famous for their intimidating length.
In a special pavilion inside the building, designated as a showcase for visiting statesmen, we saw smaller compound nouns as figurative as Handschuh or Handgemenge, and as witty as Ordnungsamt. In this pavilion the ministry presents also terms for people who the whole nation adores with pride: Fahrkartenkontrolleur (21 letters), a term for an extremely popular type of person in Berlin, or Integrationsfachkraft (21 letters), a term for the men and women who work in Job Centers and who are loved by millions of unemployed people for their compassion and listening skills.
I am very proud that I was part of this event. The invitees were the most accomplished creators of compound nouns, only eleven veteran bureaucrats from all levels of government. We all admire them, these knights of German grammar, heroes of clarity, masters of flexibility.
We took a bus tour to see a couple of long compound nouns. We had the chance to see a short version of the ministry’s name: das Bundesbildungsministerium (25 letters). We saw das Überwachungspersonal (only 20 letters) and das Versuchskaninchen (17 letters). Die Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung (speed limit) has 26 letters and is considered as the first compound noun that gave birth to a compound noun longer than itself. Motorists on the Autobahn who make the effort to read the sign bearing this word will not have enough time to reduce their speed which leads automatically to eine Geschwindigkeitsüberschreitung (30 letters!), a violation of the speed limit, and subsequently to a speeding ticket.
The officials of the ministry presented to us plans for an ambitious project for this summer when Germany will host the 2011 World Cup of women's football (or "soccer" – for my American readers). Twenty-four cranes will lift the word Frauenfußballweltmeisterschaft (30 letters) simultaneously and carry it to the Olympiastadion where it will be wrapped around several times, creating a gigantic bandage that symbolizes the healing power of sports.
After the presentation, we watched as several hundred workers began to assemble a masterpiece of German bureaucratic language, a word with 33 letters. We could only see the first dozen or so letters because of the curvature of the earth but we were told that the word will be "Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz." This is the name of a law that regulates student loans given by the government. The officials assured us that the government will use this word as a stick to beat every student who does not pay back his or her loan on time.
During the tour we were able to witness on TV the groundbreaking ceremony at the other end of the building where an extension is planned. We had to wait for the broadcast through satellite not only because of the service of Deutsche Telekom which is appreciated by the German consumers for its thoughtfulness and its aversion to rush into things, but also because the other end of the building lies already in a different time zone. The extension will be completed by April 1^st 2012. It will eliminate the Alexanderplatz and with this, the world-famous Fernsehturm will go, too. Its ball that has been hovering above Berlin for so many years will be integrated into the building extension and it will store words that run in a circle and have neither a beginning nor an end. Suggestions for these words are welcome.