Comment by shevy-java

"It is called Verschlimmbesserung: an attempted improvement that only makes things worse."

Hmmm. So, the literal transation would be:

"Verschlimm" - worsen, negative, step back. "Besserung" - improvement, getting better than before.

So, I would translate it as "an effort to improve something but actually making it worse in the process".

There is an old video clip in german about this, actually; I think it was from Loriot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj1xhv3rZI

Video quality is bad, there are probably better ones but it has english subtitles. The idea here is basically the guy tries to improve something, but in the end kind of causes the whole room to become devastated. That's kind of Verschlimmbesserung: meaning to do well, but failing to do so and causing more harm than good. (Also in the comments people connect this to Friedrich Merz; the guy is really losing popular support by the minute now. Just recently where he was unhappy how real people ask him critical questions.)