Having lived here for 1.5 years, I can say that beraucracy in germany basically works in the sense of how bureaucracy in other lesser third world countries work.

Basically, the system works in general for the average population but is broken such that it affects most those at the margins (for example, the rich, the poor, those entrepreneurial, etc).

In other countries, when this happens, you see the rich paying their way to access while the poor generally suffer until some populist movement comes and promises to save them.

It's thus really not that surprising, I just had yo change my view on where I placed each country in this developed/developing country mental model