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Bureaucracy Gone Awry

The German Certificate Fetish

Heaven for Germans is filled with orderly rows of binders. Collecting and storing certificates documenting every aspect of life is a national pastime. And if you don't have the right one, you may not exist.

How many pages does a basic job application really need to be? A cover letter. A resume. A couple of recommendations maybe. That's it, right?

Think again.

While much of the world tries to avoid major harm to the world's forests when looking for work, Germany casts its environmental-mindedness aside. Here, applications for jobs from high-level CEO right down to entry-level data-entry positions look more like Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks" than Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha," and often stretch desktop publishing software to the limit. Why the extra heft? Applications in Germany need certificates documenting almost every year of an applicant's life from the moment he or she entered elementary school until the moment the application is signed -- including the language, computer and motivational courses completed in between.

And it's not just job applications. University students, taxpayers, home owners, visa applicants -- virtually everyone who has any contact with officialdom -- has to possess advanced organizational skills to keep the avalanche of paper scraps under control. Germans are simply obsessed with paperwork to prove prior experience. Certificates are holy. And if you don't have a signed, stamped document proving that you have received training in -- say -- slopping paint on the side of a house, or entering numbers in Excel, then you simply don't know how to do it.

The obsession has its positive side. Germans are masters at keeping track of their own official, written lives. Hardly a household in the country doesn't have a wall dedicated to the almost mythic Leitz Ordner -- the German two-ring equivalent of the three-ring binder -- holding documentary evidence of virtually every bill ever paid, every official step taken.

Even university students, typically crammed into less than roomy digs, have to sacrifice valuable space to the Leitz Ordner gods. While many of the binders do keep valuable academic research material from the sinkhole of entropy, organizing the vast array of certificates necessary to actually graduate from university is a concern of at least equal importance. For each class completed, students receive a small piece of paper to prove it. Prior to final exams, the certificates must be presented to the "exam office" which then grants students allowance to sit the tests.

Away from the ivory tower, things don't get much better. Practically everywhere you turn as a resident of Germany, you'll be asked for your Meldebescheinigung -- the police issued slip of paper providing evidence of where you live. Without it you can forget about such day-to-day banalities as opening a bank account, renting "Das Boot" at the local video store, or checking out the "Idiot's Guide to Resume Writing" at the public library.

But be careful. Just having read the "Idiot's Guide" doesn't qualify you for an official looking certificate proving that you're able to write resumes. And when it comes to getting that peach of a job in Berlin, it's the certificates that are important. Buy a scale instead. The more heft the better.

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