Microbiology

Die Reinkultur is the basic unit of the laboratory: a culture grown from a single cell, with nothing else on the plate. German has lifted the word out of the laboratory and uses it for anything met in its purest form, etwas in Reinkultur. Das war Bürokratie in Reinkultur is red tape with nothing to dilute it, and the phrase usually comes with a sigh: it is said of kitsch, stubbornness or bad planning far more often than of a virtue. The picture explains the tone. A pure culture is something a microbiologist has to work to isolate, and whatever a speaker calls in Reinkultur is so undiluted that it could be examined on its own. The rest of the list follows the plate from der Nährboden to der Hemmhof, the clear ring in which resistance, or its absence, becomes visible.