Berkley Center

"In Munich, everything…and I mean EVERYTHING…is controlled," quipped a German friend of mine last week.

We were discussing the process of getting settled in Germany and the accompanying slew of bureaucratic obstacles. Indeed, successfully hurdling them requires quite a bit of skill. You need to haul your wheelbarrow of paperwork to each step of every process. For example, when registering at the university you must bring a pile of documents, your passport, and receipt of payment of the student union fee in order to pickup your "Student ID" card. While at Georgetown, your GOCard (Georgetown University ID) is considered sufficient identification by any university office, in Germany it is quite normal to have to reproduce the very same paperwork, passport, and receipt of payment when dealing with other departments of the university throughout the semester. If one piece of documentation is missing, they kindly invite you back to their office the next week, during the two-hour window that their office is open.

Both the size and style of Germany's bureaucracy are actually quite infamous. As a Hamburger (someone from the city of Hamburg, not the greasy American delight), my friend is quite accustomed to it. She finds the obsession with checking tickets, IDs, documents, and official stamps not the least bit strange. After all, she has dealt with it her entire life.

However, I was struck by the depth and breadth of the verification I was subjected to during my first weeks here. Luckily, I arrived two full weeks before classes started; the process was cumbersome enough that I did not even finish it within that period. All in all, it took me about three weeks to get properly registered with the authorities, at the university, for classes, for a student transit pass, and secure a visa. A friend who had previously studied in Germany advised me that paperwork would be my first full-time job in Germany; indeed it was. But it left me wondering about the people who have actual full-time jobs, or children, or could not afford the better part of a month to work their way through the system.

Upon trying to use the library I discovered that even library-goers are subjected to the verification mania. At all university libraries, as well as the library of the State of Bavaria, patrons must be prepared to rent a locker, leave their belongings, food, and beverage behind, stuffing their study materials into clear plastic bags. They must show their special “Library ID” (which I had to show my "Student ID" card, passport, AND verification of the registration of my address with the authorities to obtain) and pass through a security checkpoint, in order to simply enter the library's collection. Even then, libraries often require patrons to request materials in advance, refusing to let them browse the stacks themselves. And the ability to checkout books? Not a guarantee.

Maybe it is the American in me, but I was certain that I felt Ben Franklin turn in his grave. Not only do I have to produce identification to buy a monthly student transit ticket or use my bank, but I must produce such verification to prove that I am authorized to use a public library—to research, to study, to learn!

Moreover, the Germans’ apparent ambivalence astounded me. With the US presidential election taking place next week, it contrasts sharply with the debate over voter identification laws that have raged for the past two years in my home state, Wisconsin. While the voter ID debate in the United States preoccupies itself with questions of genuinely free access, equality, and prohibitive economic and social costs, every German government institution with which I have come into contact practices the type of bureaucratic controls and verification policy that impede free and open access.

Yet, millions of Germans quietly verify their identities on a daily basis in order to do complete routine tasks, including voting. In fact, it is legally required to obtain a Personal Identity Card by the age of sixteen. (Interestingly, this law originally dates from 1938 and is a Nazi-era remnant.) The days of being stopped on the sidewalk and required to produce “your papers” in Germany are indeed long gone. However, when parts of the country were a police state as recently as 1989, why do Germans fail to object such pervasive identity verification?

The contrast poses the question: if millions of Americans get so impassioned about questions of verification and free and open access, from getting carded buying beer at the grocery store to needing a photo ID to vote, why do millions of Germans fail to think twice about their ability to use a library or to vote, even when it depends on producing photo identification?

It is old news that Americans are staunchly individualist. Conservative and liberal, young and old, black and white and purple and green—we, by and large, do not enjoy having anyone tell us what to do, or for that matter, how we should do it. However, we have never had anyone forcing us to listen. The German people cannot say the same. In its relatively short history, the German state has always played a large role in the lives of its citizens. From pioneering pensions and social insurance, to scrutinizing its citizens’ bloodlines for traces of Jewish blood, and even to managing the flood of East German refugees and reunification, German state institutions have always kept tabs on its citizens. Indeed, this process habituates the German people to routine verification to a much greater extent than similar US institutions do.

It not only explains the confused frustration I found spending over two weeks dancing the bureaucratic verification tango, but also illustrates why the Germans around me stood patiently in line, not the least bit perturbed. Generations ago, they got used to it; perhaps voters in the United States should reconsider doing the same.