Strange practices in German government

When one escalates a problem from the school level, one is supposed to go the 'Ministerialbeauftragte' (MB).

MB has his office in the same school building so we went to him only to be told that in the interest of neutrality we should go to another MB. Well, the other MB is the husband of the Asst. Principal.

The head of the legal department at the Kultusministerium sees no problem with this, after all he knows the MB so well.

Have you run into similar situations? What would you do in this situation?

Schulamt? Beirat? A third MB?
Newspapers... ?
There was something on the radio yesterday about a school rektor being fired and then reinstated... but I was looking for parking and not paying that much attention...
What part of town?

the case you mean is the one rektor who was openly against G8 and the former minister Hohlmeier didn't like it and her way of telling him off was by transfering him to another school or something.
corruption is everywhere...
you could write to your member of parliament (Landtag).

planetmoni - that could be it.
I wish more people would write to parliament and their elected representatives, it's pretty rare here.
Now, the elected representatives don't really care what I have to say if I write to them, because I can't vote. I'm not the one they are worried about. It's the voters they are worried about.

It's a lot easier to sit around and bitch about things, isn't it? I get tired of it. Bitch, bitch, bitch. And when you tell them to write a letter, make a call, actually DO something about it, then all you hear is "Well, it's not going to do any good anyway."

Um, actually? I told my husband to write a letter to the Deutsche Bundesbahn after I got tired of listening to him complain about late trains, pissy staff, and non-functioning ticket machines. He got a letter back from them, saying essentially "I don't know what the hell you're on about, nobody else ever complains about this stuff."

So it really doesn't do any good.

If more than just your husband wrote in, it would do some good.

Exactly. I'm sure one letter of complaint won't make a big difference. But if you had 500 letters of complaint, somebody might consider addressing the problem. The alternative, sitting around and complaining, doesn't get anything done either except bore your conversation partner to tears.

Oh yeah, I know. It was part of the culture shock of coming here - Americans complain about bad service, and bitch at the business in question until something gets done. Or maybe that's just in Seattle. Anyway, I have this daydream of getting a buncha postcards printed up with "What ticks you off about the Bahn?" on one side, and DB's address on the other, and handing them out on the train. I'd probably just get done for littering, though.

My other point is: I'm one only person and all I can do is write my own letter. If 500 people don't join me, I really can't take responsibility for that, and Germans? Don't Do That Sort of Thing. German businesses and bureaucratic institutions count on that.

I like the postcard idea. Yeah, Germans aren't big into taking action. But if anything, the letter could be considered therapeutic. Also what you could do is contact a TV station like RTL and have them to a Reportage. They'd probably be up for it. Then after they've aired it, everyone will sit around in their livingrooms and bitch about it some more and still nothing will happen. But at least you'd have been on TV.

my mum (she is german) wrote a fax to the austrian train services as there were some problems with getting a train... not even a week later she received a letter, not really answering her questions but she received a 16EUR voucher...

SnP - I've spoken to someone in the Elternbeirat here - might have someone you can at least talk to, even if he is based in Schwabing.

Not the school beirat, of course, the hort beirat. School beirat is a bit skittish with our new Rektorin...

Great! Let me have his or her phone number and I will call.