Jakob Maria Mierscheid

Jakob Maria Mierscheid MdB has been a fictitious politician in the German Bundestag since 11 December 1979. He was the alleged deputy chairman of the Mittelstandsausschuss (Committee for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses) of the Bundestag in 1981 and 1982. According to his official biography, he was born in Morbach/Hunsrück, a very rural constituency in Rhineland-Palatinate. He is Catholic and a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Jakob Maria Mierscheid
(fictional) MdB
Mierscheid as depicted in official sources
Member of the Bundestag
for Rhineland-Palatinate
Assumed office
11 December 1979
Preceded byCarlo Schmid
ConstituencySocial Democratic Party List
Personal details
Born
Jakob Maria Mierscheid

(1933-03-01) 1 March 1933
Morbach, Rhineland-Palatinate, Nazi Germany
(now Germany)
Political partySocial Democratic Party
ResidenceMorbach
Occupation
  • Politician
  • tailor
Signature
WebsiteBundestag website

The idea of Jakob Mierscheid was created on 11 December 1979 on the back of a menu in the restaurant of the Bundestag, when two members of parliament from the SPD, Peter Würtz and Karl Haehser, decided that their recently deceased colleague Carlo Schmid needed a worthy successor.[1] He is now a widely known curiosity within the Bundestag and uses Twitter as means of communication.[2]

In 1983, the party magazine Vorwärts published an article purportedly written by Mierscheid claiming the discovery of a "law", the Mierscheid Law, that indicated a strong correlation between the election results of the SPD in national elections and West German steel production. The Bundestag official web site carries an ostensibly serious 'biography' and a photograph purporting to depict Mierscheid.[3] In previous versions of the photograph, his fashion sense seemed very antiquated and his eyeglasses were added later. The current (2010) image shows a balding man sitting in a chair, facing away from the camera, in the middle of the empty Hall of Representatives. The German language version of the site lists 615 current names although the actual membership of the Bundestag is only 614, while the English and French language versions only list the actual membership of the Bundestag. Mierscheid has his own stationery and e-mail address and issues press releases now and then.[lower-alpha 1] The picture of Mierscheid at the Bundestag is based on the RTL Samstag Nacht character Karl Ranseier.[lower-alpha 2]

The hoax is paralleled in Germany in a number of other areas; for example, Friedrich Gottlob Nagelmann is a known (fictional) lawyer, and Edmund Friedemann Dräcker is a known (fictional) diplomat. Mierscheid, Nagelmann, and Dräcker each have a long list of publications which have sometimes really been published in otherwise reputable media (science journals, parliament press).

Biography

The biography of Jakob Maria Mierscheid is that of a backbencher with a list of humble career steps. The official biography of the German parliament lists him as a member of the Trade Union of Peasants and Lumberjacks, member of the Sport Friends Club (treasurer 1977-1982), honorary member of the Choral Society of the Trade Union for Wood and Plastics Workers. First listed as official delegate to the Social Democrat Party congress in Hannover 1960, Mierscheid first visited the West German capital in 1967.

In 1967–68, he wrote a four-part series about the "travel routes of the ring-tailed wood pigeons and its avionics" in the Central Journal of the Carrier Pigeon Breeder Association, reprinted 1969 in the Swiss-confederate journal "Homing Pigeon Correspondences". He entered the parliament in 1979. Following his time as deputy chairman of the Mittelstandsausschuss (Committee for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses) of the Bundestag in 1981 and 1982, he wrote an article on the "Mierscheid Law" in the Social Democrats' journal Vorwärts[lower-alpha 3] published on 14 July 1983.[4]

His activities continued with an article in Vorwärts titled "The Solution: More market than corruption" published on 12 January 1985, and in 1993 he authored "Ecological data on the CFC replacement R134a" for the third Höchst Stone Louse Symposium in Frankfurt.[lower-alpha 4]

Mierscheid Bridge

There are some approved biography books like that of Peter Raabe: Die Mierscheid-Akte. Dokumentarische Spuren eines Phantoms (The Mierscheid File: Documentary Traces of a Phantom). Later Dietrich Sperling and Friedhelm Wollner published Jakob Mierscheid, Aus dem Leben eines Abgeordneten: Eine politische Holografie (Jakob Mierscheid, from the Life of a Member of Parliament: A Political Holography) in 1998.

On 11 December 2004, Mierscheid celebrated his 25th anniversary as member of the Bundestag.[6] On 1 March 2013, the President of the German Bundestag, Mr. Norbert Lammert, said an official congratulation on occasion of Mierscheid's 80th birthday.[7] Mierscheid did not show up to a reception given in his honour in his home-town of Morbach. [8]

In July 2005, the German Tagesschau announced the exit of Mierscheid from SPD to the German Linkspartei and WASG. Mierscheid's angry dementi was announced both by the Tagesschau,[9] and an interview in Der Spiegel.[10]

After the parliament moved to Berlin, two new office buildings for members of parliament were connected with a pedestrian bridge over the Spree river. This bridge was nicknamed the "Mierscheid Bridge". Attempts to mark it with an official plate were said to have failed because "the nails were nuts" (pun on Niete meaning nut/rivet, a blank in lottery or a person that is unable to accomplish anything).

After the historic defeat in the 2009 election, Mierscheid quoted Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" in German to raise the spirits of his comrades in the Bundestag.[11]

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Further appreciation

On Mierscheid’s 80th "birthday" in 2013, his alleged home town Morbach opened a hiking trail, a roundtrip of about 16 km (10 miles), providing humorous reflections on Mierscheid’s life and political activities on 14 information boards along the trail.

See also

Notes
  1. which are in fact answered by one of the SPD MoPs
  2. a fictitious person whose obituary appears in various forms as a running gag
  3. Vorwärts, literally "Forward", from 19th-century revolutionary slogan "Forward"
  4. (The stone louse is a fictitious species described in the highly reputed medical dictionary, Pschyrembel[5]).

References
  1. Müntefering, Michelle (1 March 2010). "Eine zweifelhafte Existenz" [A Doubtful Existence]. Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 15 June 2016.
  2. Der Spiegel, 9 April 2009, Die Welt der Phantome, Von Jochen Leffers, 2. Teil: Zwitschern mit Jakob Maria Mierscheid (The World of Phantoms, Twittering with JMM)
  3. "Abgeordnete: Jakob Maria Mierscheid, SPD". Deutscher Bundestag. Archived from the original on 27 April 2010. Retrieved 19 July 2008.
  4. ""Mierscheid-Gesetz" für die SPD: Neue Forschungsergebnisse zur Wahlprognostik" ["Mierscheid Law " for the SPD: Results of New Research on Election Forecasting]. Vorwärts (in German) (29). 14 July 1983. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
  5. Pschyrembel Klinisches Wörterbuch (in German) (259th ed.). de Gruyter. 2002.
  6. tagesschau.de: "Ich gehöre zu den Säulen des Staatswesens" (I am one of the pillars of the state), 12. Dezember 2004
  7. "Bundestagspräsident gratuliert Jakob Mierscheid". YouTube. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  8. "Großer Bahnhof für den großen Bundestagsabgeordneten". Volsfreund.de. 27 February 2013. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  10. "Bertrittsgerüchte: Mierscheid schließt nichts aus". SPIEGEL ONLINE. 13 July 2005. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  11. Deutscher Bundestag (1 August 2009). "Deutscher Bundestag: Web-Archiv". WEbarchiv.bundestag.de. Retrieved 24 October 2014.

Further reading
  • Raabe, Peter, ed. (1986). Die Mierscheid-Akte. Dokumentarische Spuren eines Phantoms [The Mierscheid File: Documentary Traces of a Phantom] (in German). Hannover: Fackelträgerverlag. ISBN 3-7716-1464-3.
  • Sperling, Dietrich (1998). Wollner, Friedhelm (ed.). Jakob Mierscheid, Aus dem Leben eines Abgeordneten: Eine politische Holografie [Jakob Mierscheid, from the Life of a Member of Parliament: A Political Holography] (in German). Nomos. ISBN 3-7890-5484-4.
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