Do you think your governor has done a good job during the pandemic?

[DFW]

172. More false than true.

They drown in their rules and bureaucracy. They have more "civil servants" (too often they are neither) than they need (not as bad as France, granted), and it gets in the way of things. Europeans love their rules, and most bureaucrats spend their time making them up with no clue as to whether or not they are practical, workable or people-friendly.

Don't get me wrong, the Nazi era is long past, and plenty of officials are friendly enough, but they are famously "stur" which is a word that means a combination of "stubborn" and "inflexible." If they decide your face is green, only a dreaded admonishment from a higher-ranking official will change that.

Case in point: one election day here, about 30 years ago, my wife went to the polling place to cast her vote. I didn't have my residence here yet. She was told she couldn't vote here because she lived in München (Munich). She said that was ridiculous, because she had never lived in München or anywhere near there. They kept refusing to let her vote, and kept insisting she lived in München.

Finally she got an idea, and told them to look up our two daughters, aged 3 and 5 (around there). Sure enough, our daughters were properly registered as living here in our town near Düsseldorf. She then said she would call the police so they could have her arrested for child abandonment (according to the voting official), or else let her vote. Terrified of public ridicule (the press was there), as are all incompetent public officials, they let her cast a provisional ballot and told her to get her "residence issue" sorted out at city hall the next day. Voting here is on a Sunday, so City Hall wasn't open.

She went there the next day, but were either unwilling or incapable (or, more likely, a combination of both) of erasing her fictitious residence in München. They DID agree to transfer her residence to our town, but at some fictitious time in the past, she had moved to München, and that's all there is to it.

Another example--in our town, they are always trying to improve the streets and keep them in a safe state of repair. BUT--the never think out the consequences to traffic or the businesses on the streets affected, never announce when the construction work is done, and if they haven't been specifically instructed to do so, neglect to build or even maintain bicycle paths which are often extra lanes on the side of German streets. Sometimes bicycle lanes just end in the middle of busy streets because no specific instructions were given to build them.

The Germans are only too aware of this, and often mock it themselves. Years ago, there was a film here called "Der Zubringer." It means access road or on-ramp, and applies to access to highways or an Autobahn. In the film, someone had the idea to spend millions of public money on a "Zubringer" to a planned Autobahn. They figured they'd get ahead of the game and build it first. One town bureaucrat, the only guy in town with common sense or a conscience, protested that they should wait until construction for the planned Autobahn had begun, because if it were canceled, they would have built their access road for nothing (and to nowhere). He was overruled as being far too cautious, and the town went and built their access ramp, costing millions.

The planned Autobahn was indeed canceled, but the access ramp was already built, and they had a big opening ceremony with champagne for this huge access ramp that ended in the middle of a field somewhere. The guy had, in the meantime, thrown in the towel trying to reform the system, and was promoted for his acquiescence. As soon as the expensive and useless Zubringer was built and celebrated, he immediately announced he was leaving for a month's vacation, and wished his department great success in his absence.

The only comment my wife had was how accurately it reflected German bureaucracy. She is a social worker, and ran into roadblocks all the time, put up by clueless bureaucrats in the city government, at that time run by a coalition of Social Democrats and Communists. She worked (at the time) for the youth center in town, and they once wanted to put on a concert of a local band. The town government went ballistic--not for any safety violations or loudness, but because the youth center didn't get approval for the shape and form of the admission stickers.

It is not universal, but it is often the case that Germans are more concerned making rules and getting them followed than whether or not those rules serve any purpose or are in the least practical. It is the only country I know of with an "Ordnungsamt" in every town. Roughly translated, it means "Department of Order." Sometimes, they do serve useful purposes, taken care of by other parts of a city government in other countries, but sometimes they are literally there to enforce useless rules thought up by useless bureaucrats. The only hope is that in Germany, as with France, there are no greater critics of the system than the Germans, themselves.