Seeking help to find subject of sentence -- and interpret a time reference

[edmont]

Question A:  Would you agree that das Maß is not the subject of the below German sentence?  I guess the subject must be "Daß beide Gremien ... verschmelzen konnten"
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Question B: Would you agree that "den nächsten Wochen" cannot mean the next weeks after "Ende Mai" , and that "den nächsten Wochen" must refer to weeks before the Ende Mai? 
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German sentence:

Daß beide Gremien -- der Arbeitsausschuß und das Arbeiterkomitee -- Ende Mai zu einem verschmelzen konnten, dokumentiert das Maß an Integrationsarbeit, das in den nächsten Wochen geleistet wurde.

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My attempted English translations:

1) Subject: daß beide Gremien ... verschmelzen konnten

That the two committees -- the Working Committee and the Workers' Committee -- could merge at the end of May shows the amount of integration work that was accomplished in the next weeks.

2) Subject: das Maß:

The amount of integration work that was accomplished in the next weeks documents that the Working Committee and Workers' Committee could merge at the end of May.

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Thank you for any assistance.

[tiorthan]

Your assumption for the subject is correct, however, your assumption about the end of May isn't. As a matter of fact "Ende Mai" and "in den nächsten Wochen" have no clear relation to each other. Because, while the integration work made the merger at the end of May possible the sentence doesn't really tell us when this integration work actually happened.

In actual fact, the integration work for the merger doesn't even have to be part of the integration work that happens "in den nächsten Wochen" because the sentence doesn't say anything about the work done to enable the merger being part of the integration work, it only cites it as a means to gauge the amount of work that was being done.

Having said that, writers would normally not just pick something at random to illustrate something else, so it is very likely that the merger preparation was part of the integration work that was done "in the next weeks" so the end of May is at some point after the next weeks. It may be part of the next weeks or even after the time. The other plausible option is that the merger is actually the point in time when the next weeks start. In that case the actual merger preparation work wouldn't be part of the next weeks but that style of giving examples by the thing that started or inspired something else is quite common.

[edmont]

Thank you very much tiorthan for the admirably thorough and clear response.

It's not really necessary to read what follows -- I don't ask further questions, but merely make comments.

My original post was already getting too long, so I left one important thing out of it. About a page before the German sentence we are considering, the person writing says that the Workers' Committee was formed in late April. Then we have a further page of text, and then we have the sentence you, tiorthan, have thoroughly analyzed.

So, I suppose the time period hovering implicitly over the analyzed sentence was still late April, even though the author only mentioned late April a whole page earlier. Thus "in the next weeks" would seem to refer to the weeks after late April, before the merging of the two committees in late May. 

I think I was thrown off by the form of the sentence, which mentions late May and then immediately says "in the next weeks" -- even though the writer does not mean the next weeks after late May!  Apparently the author expects me to remember the fact that a page before, he said the Workers' Committee was formed in late April. 

When reading works of history, of course, the writer's time frame is often unspoken because it was already stated a page or so before -- the reader may have forgotten, but historians feel it is tedious to constantly repeat what time frame their statements refer to.

Anyway, I found that by using the correct subject -- the one you designated tiorthan -- and by translating the verb in passive form, the whole thing becomes less confusing:

The amount of integration work that was accomplished in the next weeks is shown by the fact that the two committees – the Working Committee and the Workers’ Committee – could merge at the end of May.

Using the passive form for the sentence causes "the next weeks" phrase to come before "the end of May" phrase. That sequence prevents the reader, on reading "the next weeks," from instantly assuming they come after the end of May.

I realize the above interpretation leaves out some of the possibilities you so ably considered, but if I understood your post properly, you agree that something like the above translation captures the most likely meaning of the sentence. 

Thank you very much again, tiorthan.