Hi fellow applicants to Berlin office,
seeing many posts about problems and long delays, I'd like to give hope that they can be fast, too.
We had less than 1 month processing time in Berlin, counting from sponsorship approval to PR visa approval. In fact, passport request came already within about 3 weeks, and we could hardly believe that this was it already.
Expecting months or a year of processing time, we had already applied for a temporary visa, which we then had to cancel before it was issued. Still we lost the fee for the temporary visa, but what a small price to pay for getting the PR so fast.

Good luck to you others!
DrMac