The distinction I presume germany makes (because so do the Netherlands) is whether an intentional killing was premeditated (i.e. poisoning a spouse, or lying in ambush with a knife) or was conceived of in the heat of the moment (i.e. you insult my mother, I get so angry I grab a knife and stab you).

I think in America, this is the difference between murder in the first and second degree.

Germany has another (unique and different to the neighbours) distinction between "Mord" and "Totschlag" (both are translated to "murder" in my English version of the law). The former requires one additional criterion from a list to be fulfilled. These are dark motives (killing for killing's sake, sexual satisfaction, greed, hate, honour killings, or similar), reprehensible manner (treacherous, cruel, or with means dangerous to the public), and to facilitate or cover up another crime.

This distinction is pretty out of place in German criminal law but plans to change them move very slow.

Weird. So why did the comment single out premeditated murder?

Getting into a fight and unintentionally/recklessly causing lethal injuries, or unintentionally/recklessly causing a lethal accident to happen wouldn't then normally be called "murder" making the distinction unnecessary?

EDIT: To clarify, I'm not picking on coldtea. This isn't the first time I've seen people be corrected when using "murder" to refer to "first-degree murder".

I think the distinction is that if you plan to kill someone for months, then you wouldn't plan to do so on a submarine, as that would be a hard place to cover up the act.

If however, you're on a submarine and then decide to kill someone in a rage, then it's still murder, but it's not planned far in advance.

I guess "intentionally killing someone in a rage" didn't come to my mind. I can imagine planning to kill someone and then doing it or unintentionally killing someone in a fight/assault. But knowingly killing someone out of the blue never crossed my mind. Not sure what that says about me, if anything.

For starters, there's such a thing as justified homicide, i.e. Self-defense. Voluntary manslaughter covers the situation you describe, in which a suspect kills someone during a fight but can argue that he did not intend for the fight to become lethal. Such as punching someone who then falls and suffers a fatal head injury.