> It's not like you can bribe the bureaucrat working on your form

are you trying to say "bureaucrat can't speed up" or are you doubting someone physically can't give someone else some cash?

As someone living in Germany, I would be very surprised if someone legit manages to bribe their way to skip a step somewhere. At an institutional level, perhaps it's more surprising if it never ever happens anywhere at all; but at an individual level, your particular case hitting a bribeable person and you knowing of it seems like worse odds than seeing a shooting star during a solar eclipse. Maybe if you are close family, or close enough plus a sob story, the person might have the ability to handle your case first; that sounds like something the computer system would allow in order to avoid getting stuck on a case they can't currently work on (for whatever reason) at the head of the queue. They're probably not the only step though so it might not help much

The third option is “they could speed up but won’t do it for a bribe”.