guarantee
noun · Bürgschaft
Bürgschaft if the promisor stands behind someone else’s debt and falls with it, Garantie if the promise is meant to stand on its own. Machine output says Garantie almost without exception, and the German word strips the guarantor of form, accessoriness and the debtor’s defences in one move.
Which translation, when
Why
English uses guarantee for the whole family, from the classic surety who pays only if the debtor does not, to the on-demand instrument that pays first and argues later. German law splits the family at the root. The Bürgschaft is accessory, § 767 BGB ties the surety’s liability to the principal debt, § 768 BGB hands him the debtor’s defences, and § 771 BGB even lets him send the creditor to the debtor first, unless the Bürgschaft is selbstschuldnerisch, § 773 BGB, or a commercial matter, § 349 HGB. It is also form-bound, § 766 BGB wants the surety’s declaration on paper, electronic form excluded, though merchants are freed by § 350 HGB. The Garantie has none of this, no accessoriness, no statutory defences, no form, which is exactly why banks sell it. So a guarantee rendered as Garantie has not been translated, it has been upgraded, the safety rails of §§ 765 ff. BGB are gone, and the guarantor’s counsel will want them back.
Typical mistakes
- Garantie is the harder instrument, independent of the secured debt, a guarantee that meant suretyship and arrives as Garantie has silently waived accessoriness and the defences of § 768 BGB.
- Form runs one way, the Bürgschaft of a private guarantor needs paper, § 766 BGB, electronic form excluded, so a guarantee concluded by exchange of PDFs may fail as Bürgschaft and survive only if it really was a Garantie, merchants excepted, § 350 HGB.
- Auf erstes Anfordern belongs to the Garantie, grafting it onto a Bürgschaft creates a hybrid German case law polices strictly, above all in standard terms, so the phrase is a design decision, not a flourish.
What matters
Parent company support shows the fork: the parent guarantees the obligations of its subsidiary. As Bürgschaft the parent pays what the subsidiary owes, with the subsidiary’s defences, § 768 BGB, and possibly only after the creditor has tried the subsidiary, § 771 BGB. As Garantie the parent pays on the terms of its own promise, debt or no debt. The German word decides which balance sheet risk was signed.
What the machine misses
Guarantee comes back from the engines as Garantie with near total consistency, and in German that word is a decision, not a default. The accessory Bürgschaft, the instrument most English guarantees actually describe, disappears from the text, and with it the paper form, the borrowed defences and the right to point the creditor at the debtor first, the reader holds a harder promise than the drafter made.
Examples
| a bank guarantee | eine Bankgarantie |
| a guarantee for the obligations of | eine Bürgschaft für die Verbindlichkeiten von |
| the guarantor | der Bürge |
| guarantee on first demand | Garantie auf erstes Anfordern |