Hey Mark, as much as I am in the market for a new job, I haven't got mainstream qualifications (as I said, niche industry) so I doubt anyone here is going to be able to help me. So feel free to shuffle this post off to General, or even better, complaints.

The crunch is simply this: I am the head of one of the smallest departments, and therefore was never given "Geschäftleitung (GL)" status of the others by the previous boss. Now what they have done is created a GL position for someone else who sits between me and the (new) manager. The person who now fills this new position is good friends with the CEO and practically tells the Manager what to do as well. He is impossible to deal with. He has kicked me out of my office (so the pictures and plants are gone), which means now there is not enough room for all of us in my department workspace. Hence, someone will have to go.

As for the language, his excuse to me is that I (and the others in my department) are paid enough that he can expect German. My response to that is that he (and the manager) are not only paid enough to be able to understand English, but it is the worldwide standard language for the industry. This company has very questionable politics, evident by the extremely high staff turnover.

As for delegation, those in my department with enough experience also only speak english. Only those with very little experience are locals.

As I just said, this guy is impossible to deal with. He is a local, thinks he knows it all, has basically full control and has the full support of the CEO. I intend to speak to him next week and seek to be "released" on the ground of "restructure". I cant afford to resign myself. After all, his new position makes me 60% redundant. That would at least give me the opportunity to study German full-time for a few months which I think is my greatest obstacle to future employment.