The unthinking bureaucrat

 Most countries have some level of bureaucracy that plagues its citizens and any foreigner foolhardy enough to stay any length of time that might require an encounter with it. Most bureaucracy in most countries is slow and ineffective, working part of the time, if it does what it is meant to do it takes twice as long as it is predicted to, and as usual manages to extract inordinate sums of money from those that are trapped in its system. While I don't think the Prussians actually created it, in fact I very much suspect the little French sadist Napoleon is guilty of that particular deed, Prussia historically was very good at developing and maintain large amounts of "red tape" or at least that was its reputation.

Bureaucracy of course is the long arm of the vigilant state, trying to know all that goes on with the people living in it. From charging taxes -its most lucrative and important function- to controlling who was actually working in the country, the official institutions have grown exponentially over the centuries. Since at its core is the notion of systematising legal processes and things such as census taking for the purposes of feeding the states coffers it is hardly surprising that this fits within the Prussian character with their love of rules and regulations as well as orderly progress through anything. What shocked me was the utter brainlessness of most, possibly all bureaucrats I have encountered. The willing shutting off of their brains might be a survival mechanism to avoid burn-out from shear boredom or from realising your work is surely killing someone's will to keep going. 

While I have encountered and dealt with ineffective, time-consuming, and just plain senseless red-tape in many countries, Latin America and Spain being notorious in having a lot of ineffective bureaucracy, I had not encounter the automatons that inhabit the labyrinthian world of German bureaucracy. Taking a step back there was an element of it in Spain when the letter confirming my residence permit was ready for pick up got lost in the mail and it would be months before I even found out about it. The most stellar moment of blind bureaucratic senselessness happened three years or so into my time in Germany. I was based at the history of medicine institute, which at that particular university is attached to the medical faculty. At this particular university the medical faculty prided themselves in being as autonomous as possible from the main administration. This led to this particularly risable, frustrating, and ultimately illuminating moment. Part of this autonomy meant that we had two emails: one from the university itself and one from the medical faculty- I had merged them into one to simplify my existence but I did it on the main university's email provider not the university clinic's. What I hadn't realised was that this also meant a totally different internet network on the premises. One day my desktop was refusing to open my university email telling me it a was a forbidden page. After giving it a day or two, during which time I used my phone to answer university emails, I called IT. Whoever's turn it was to be at the service desk responded and went through different steps with me. Nothing worked, she did some digging at which point she came up with the reason: the network was blocking all email providers other than the university clinic's own email service. I pointed out that I was accessing the university's own email service, you know the university we both worked for....to which she responded that "the board had made this decision and it could not be changed or overridden". I pointed out the absurdity of blocking the email service of the very university we all belonged to....to which she responded that 'as it was a decision of the board it was not absurd'. Suffice to say the problem was never solved and I had to find a work-around solution to access my work emails at work. This little exchange is not the height of absurdity German bureaucracy can reach but it began to enlighten me on the reasons why things are as they are in German society. I mean, if you can't question a obviously absurd situation caused by possibly a normal decision, ie, your decision has led to an unwanted consequence that can and should be reversed, because the decision itself cannot be question (being a set rule or law) no matter the benefit of questioning it, you open the door to a society where the rules and the law, no matter their absurdity, are more important than logic, the person, humanity, compassion, and all other categories of normal human life. It also sheds an unfortunate historical light on the things that happened in Germany almost a century ago.  When you follow rules and laws no matter their obvious inhumanity because the rules and laws must be kept at all cost you have forgotten how to be human. 

Without going into too much  detail I am once again dealing with a German bureaucratic issue. Its absurdity is up there, way up there, kafkaesque really, but I have to try to stay within the norms once again. The particular pencil pusher in question this time around has known for the better part of the last three years that I no longer live in Germany. In fact on several occasions in which postal mail would be an impediment to effective exchanges he has emailed me first with a pdf attached. So he is more than aware that mailing something to my old German address is pointless. Well he has done just that. With a document that had a time limit to it and which I needed to receive immediately, he has done just that. I am in no doubt that he has done it out of spite because I pointed out he was wrong about a date. I had to do this because it concerned an important document and it was totally not in my favour to cover up his mistake. So now I need to write a letter, formal, pleading, polite, beggin, to another bureaucrat to see if things can be solved and I have to mail it, snail mail, to the pencil pusher since he is the gate keeper. It is beyond clear at this moment that this entire post has been a vent before sitting down to write said letter. Wish me luck!