Today's newsletter will consider a famously funny topic - Germans.
Jakob Maria Mierscheid - The German Bundestag (Federal parliament) recently celebrated the 90th birthday of its oldest member: Jakob Maria Mierscheid (pronounced "Meer-sheyd" for our non-German-speaking readers). Mr. Mierscheid was born in 1933 in a small village in the Hunrück mountains of Rhineland-Palatinate. After completing an apprenticeship as tailor in 1956, he soon joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD). With strong local connections through his membership of the Agriculture and Forestry Union, the volunteer fire brigade, and local men's choir, he was elected to the (West) German parliament in 1973.
Jakob Maria Mierscheid, undated photograph
Backbench influencer - Mr. Mierscheid's official Bundestag profile portraits a solid backbencher who has never stepped into the political limelight beyond becoming the chairman of the Committee for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses in 1981. He has also championed questions of general welfare, causes related to the preservation and care of domestic pigeons, and is the parliament's foremost expert on Newfoundlanders. He most recently submitted a proposal to support public employee housing expenses - the elegantly named Fehlsubventionierungsmietentzerrungsförderungsausgleichsabgabe (yes, this is technically a real word).
The Bundestag phantom - Despite his birthday being officially recognized by the Bundestag, Mierscheid did not attend the celebration. In fact, he has never attended a single session of parliament and nobody has actually ever seen him.
This is because Jakob Mierscheid was created as a fictional character on 11 December 1979 on the back of a menu in the restaurant of the Bundestag. Two Social Democrat MPs felt that their recently deceased colleague (and notable constitutional thinker) Carlo Schmid needed a worthy successor - and thus Jakob Maria Mierscheid was born. He is by now a widely known curiosity within the Bundestag and sometimes even the German media gets confused: In July 2005, the German public broadcasting news show Tageschau announced the exit of Mierscheid from the SPD to the German Left Party (Linkspartei). Mierscheid's angry dementi was announced both by the Tagesschau, and in an interview in Der Spiegel shortly thereafter.
The only known photo of Jakob Maria Mierscheid in the main chamber of the Bundestag