Interesting post and welcome to the board. Hope to hear more from you.
I wonder when reading this:
All publishers had to sign the Publisher Card before which is now viewed as a proof of membership by the Religious Community. The number of 192'000 members is officially given unless there are only about 165'000 publishers. Because a corporation of public law has to have a minimum size also inactive members are counted.
.. which number the WTS uses when printing its numbers for Germany in the world's numbers records for each country in the WT. Does it inflate it and use the number including inactive ones, or does it record the accurate number of active publishers? Interesting....more manipulation by the WTS?
Thanks for providing the information for us.
Had Enough
ps: German JW - just a friendly hint..to make the quotation feature work, just change your "\" in the 'end quote brackets' to "/" without the "".