Cutting Red Tape – But How? New Economy Short Cut with Patrick Bernau, Georg Diez and Johanna Sieben
28/October/2025
03:00 PM CEST
PLACE
Zoom
LANGUAGE
German
When people hear the word “bureaucracy”, they think of Leitz folders, lengthy planning approval procedures, and an appointment at the citizens’ office that’s two months away. Yet administration was once an achievement: it implements political decisions, organizes public life – and protects against arbitrariness. So what makes sense when calls to cut red tape have been heard for years? What is unnecessary, what is not? And aren’t Germans themselves the ones who want rules and are quick to go to court?
Cutting red tape — but how? – What kind of administration do we need
with
Patrick Bernau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and author of the book “Bürokratische Republik Deutschland” Georg Diez, Fellow at ProjectTogether and the Max Planck Society
Johanna Sieben, Director of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival
on Tuesday, 28 October 2025 at 3:00 PM – via Zoom. Register here.
Patrick Bernau
is head of the business and value departments at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper. He trained at the Cologne School of Journalism for Politics and Economics and received his doctorate from the University of Cologne for his research on economic behavior. He is a member of the boards of trustees at the Max Planck Institutes for Social Research and Brain Research. His work has received numerous awards.
Georg Diez
is an author and journalist. He studied history and philosophy in Munich, Hamburg, Paris, and Berlin and wrote as a critic for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, and Die Zeit. For almost a decade, he wrote the column “Der Kritiker” (The Critic) for Spiegel Online. After a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, he co-founded the academic start-up The New Institute in Hamburg in 2019. He is currently a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Multireligious and Multiethnic Societies, where he conducts research on complexity thinking and democracy, and at Project Together in Berlin, where he works on the topic of radical bureaucracy. Georg lives in Berlin and Stockholm.
Johanna Sieben
works at the intersection of the public sector, civil society, and creative practice. Her focus is on fostering new forms of collaboration and exchange within administration and politics, and on making hidden potentials for innovation visible. She explores how bureaucratic structures can become spaces of democratic design and advocates for an open, learning, and experimental culture within public administration. Johanna is committed to connecting people and organizations that are working toward inclusive, creative, and future-oriented forms of public governance.