Maybe try the Verbraucherzentrale: https://www.verbraucherzentrale-berlin.de/beratung-be
They should be able to give you legal advice.
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Maybe try the Verbraucherzentrale: https://www.verbraucherzentrale-berlin.de/beratung-be
They should be able to give you legal advice.
I did contact them actually, but they explicitly state that they do not offer advice in English. My German is not good enough to understand legal advice, and I don't know any one well enough that I can ask to help with it.
Whenever I have to deal with a French-only gov agency, I give them a bilingual letter with my original English directly next to machine translated French. The machine translation for French is good enough, which is likely the same for German. So the machine translation serves to get the letter past the 1st tier staff who just look for trivial reasons to reject a case. Then having the original English next to it enables the case worker to potentially have a chance at understanding what you mean whenever the machine translation is rough.
Not sure about Germany specifically but worth a try.
I managed to get an appointment for a consultation on the 14th. But they contacted me to say that they were required to only speak to me in German. So I either had to cancel or bring an interpreter. Machine translating is fine for written, but problematic for real time.
Indeed, you lose the convenience of a realtime chat. Which means the conversation will be slow because when they respond in writing it may trigger more questions.
In Brussels we have social interpretters. I’m not sure if they are paid or if they volunteer, but at no cost they send an interpretter to wherever they are needed. They do this for anyone, not just poor people. But there’s a limitation: they are not certified interpretters thus cannot be used in court.
I mention this because perhaps Berlin has something comparable. OTOH, if the legal advice /must/ be in German, it stands to reason that they would also reject non-certified interpretters. Otherwise I don’t understand the purpose of the law. If they would even theoretically allow a friend or anyone arbitrary to help you, it would somewhat defeat the point.
How do you want to get in contact with them? Go there in person or via email?
Please contact me via message.