> everything. The record keeping fanaticism was the routinization of all
> social functions. Political party memberships, places of work, schools
> attended, income, places of residence, religion, family trees---the
> records of these facts defined who and what you were and what your
> function should be in the new rationally ordered state---a state whose
> primary function was to wage war.
Thing is, I think this impulse extended quite a bit before Weimar and Germany. I can't cite any histories, but I'm pretty sure there's a tradition of recording that stretches throughout at least Northern Europe into the 19th century. To Napoleon? Bismark? Even film clubs today issue photo IDs.
-- Andy