31-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The Soul-Sapping Grind of Doing Business in Bureaucratic Germany
Six years ago, Marco Scheel bought a 200-year-old estate in the hamlet of Teplitz on Germany's Baltic Sea coast. After years of renovation that turned the stone-and-brick ruin into a tasteful company headquarters, Nordwolle, his organic outdoor clothing business, moved in.
The problem: Scheel and his 40 staff are there illegally. The local authority initially deemed the dark metal roof fit to shelter horses, not human employees. Then it turned out the metal stairway serving as a makeshift fire exit rested on a granite slab—a 'natural building material' that needs a special building authorization. A noncompliant smoke-evacuation window is still holding up the construction permit.
