The Saxon Office Swings, and 113 Hands Hold On
Saxony is spending 3.2 million euros a year on 113 commissioners, ombudspeople, and special envoys, each one sworn to lubricate some part of the state while proving it can still blush in public.
Administrative Grief Correspondent
Saxony’s government is spending 3.2 million euros a year to keep 113 commissioners, ombudspeople, and special envoys in circulation, a roster so crowded it looks less like public service than a state-sponsored habit of getting someone else in the room to do the touching. In Dresden, the title now matters more than the job: one person handles equality, another climate, another antisemitism, another digitalization, another regional pride, and several seem to exist mainly so ministers can say they have made contact without having to leave a fingerprint.
The list grew under both conservative and left-wing administrations, which is how this kind of office culture reproduces itself: one side calls it discipline, the other calls it compassion, and both get off on the same arrangement of distance, cover, and plausible deniability. A commissioner in Saxony is expected to arrive polished, speak in the approved tones, and vanish before anyone asks who actually did the work or why the room still smells like aftershave and avoidance.
“The state has built itself a very expensive conscience with a lot of titles and very little pulse,” said Leipzig political scientist Jana Krüger, who requested anonymity because she once accepted a panel invitation from one of the offices and still has to pretend that counted as engagement. “Every problem gets a person, every person gets a logo, and the real work gets buried under ceremonial concern and a committee photo.”
The finance ministry has defended the arrangement as a practical response to complex demands across the state administration. That is the official line, and it has the familiar polish of a man explaining why he keeps three keys for one locked room. In practice, the system gives ministers a way to appear intimate with every crisis while remaining safely untouched by any of them: they appoint a commissioner, stage a meeting, distribute a memo, and call it handled while the damage stays exactly where it was left.
This is not accidental overload; it is office culture with cufflinks on. Saxony’s political class has made a small empire out of title inflation, where every issue gets its own envoy, every envoy gets a desk, and every desk gets the burden of pretending the state has finally learned how to listen. The ritual is always the same: a ministry announces sensitivity, a special representative smiles for the press, and the administration congratulates itself for maintaining contact without ever risking consequence.
Critics from the opposition have attacked the spending as bloated and self-regarding. Others in the governing camp mutter that Saxony simply reflects modern government, which is a charming way of saying the state now needs 113 adults in matching suits to help it simulate commitment. Nobody wants to abolish a commissioner because abolition would force someone to do the job without the flattering veil of procedure, without the lubricating language of process, and without the soft-focus protection that turns responsibility into theater.
The result is a public machine that keeps appointing interpreters for its own failures. Citizens get a hotline, a report, a task force, a roundtable, and a logo designed to resemble moral seriousness. What they do not get, reliably, is less humiliation at the counter or more competence in the corridor. Saxony has not so much hired help as assembled a very expensive cast to stand around the bed, smooth the sheets, and insist the patient is being well taken care of while nobody admits who keeps leaving the door ajar.
The budget for the offices is expected to remain in place for now, with no formal review announced this week, which means the state will keep paying for the privilege of being courted by its own subordinates and never quite delivered to account.