covenant
noun · Verpflichtung
Verpflichtung or Zusage for a contractual covenant, and Financial Covenants stay English in German loan practice, but never Bund, that is the biblical or federal word, so a covenant rendered as Bund has signed a testament, not a term sheet. Real-property covenants have no clean German twin, the nearest are the Dienstbarkeit and the Reallast, §§ 1018, 1105 BGB.
Which translation, when
Why
Covenant is a promise, and German answers with the plain words for one, die Verpflichtung and die Zusage, affirmative covenants being Handlungspflichten and negative covenants Unterlassungspflichten, while the loan market simply keeps the English Covenants and Financial Covenants, so the translator often leaves them. What covenant is never is Bund, the word for a biblical covenant or the federal state, der Bund, so the reflex rendering turns a credit term into scripture. The harder gap is the real-property covenant, the promise meant to run with the land, which German property law does not build the same way, the numerus clausus offers only defined real rights, the Grunddienstbarkeit, § 1018 BGB, the beschränkte persönliche Dienstbarkeit, § 1090 BGB, and the Reallast, § 1105 BGB, none of them a freely drafted covenant, so a restrictive covenant reconstructs into a Dienstbarkeit or stays a merely contractual duty with no automatic run to successors. So covenant translates by field, a promise in contract, an English term of art in finance, and a reconstruction in property, and Bund belongs to none of the three.
Typical mistakes
- Bund is scripture or the federal state, a contractual covenant is eine Verpflichtung or Zusage, and Financial Covenants stay English, so der Bund files a loan term under the Old Testament.
- Covenants running with the land have no free German form, the numerus clausus offers the Dienstbarkeit, § 1018 BGB, or the Reallast, § 1105 BGB, so a restrictive covenant must be reconstructed, not translated, and binds successors only where it fits a real right.
- Affirmative and negative covenants are Handlungs- und Unterlassungspflichten, plain duties, so importing a special covenant doctrine overstates what German contract law needs.
What matters
Facility agreements and land contracts split the word: the financial covenants of a German-law facility usually stay Financial Covenants, plain Verpflichtungen in substance, while a restrictive covenant on a plot reconstructs into a Grunddienstbarkeit, § 1018 BGB, to bind later owners at all. Der Bund des Darlehensvertrags would read like a covenant with the Almighty.
What the machine misses
Covenant lands as Bund in machine output more often than any finance lawyer would like, the biblical and federal word for a credit term, and German either says Verpflichtung or keeps the English Covenants outright. The property sense breaks worse, a covenant running with the land has no free German form, only the defined real rights of the Dienstbarkeit and the Reallast, so the translated covenant either preaches or promises something the land register will not enforce.
Examples
| a covenant not to compete | ein Wettbewerbsverbot |
| financial covenants | die Financial Covenants |
| covenant to repair | die Instandhaltungspflicht |
| covenant running with the land | die Grunddienstbarkeit |