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Ode To Pay: Germans Say Friedrich Schiller Must Pay

DEAR Friedrich Schiller, though you have been dead for more than 200 years, and never watched television, we remind you that you should pay your TV and radio licence fee.

Das ist alles.

Schiller is, of course, the writer of Ode To Joy (An die Freude), on which the anthem of the European Union is based. He is also a non-payer of the German licence fee, and the German fee collection agency, GEZ, says he must pay.

The demand was sent to Mr Friedrich Schiller, care of a primary school bearing his name, the Friedrich Schiller Primary School in the eastern town of Weigsdorf-Koeblitz.

With the annual fee of about 200 euros (£157) unpaid since 1805 Schiller would owe more than 40,000 euros.

Of course, there is every chance the German will laugh it off as terrible funny. And Herr Schiller will not be locked up for the rest of his natural life.

Of course, it’s all one in the eye for those who accuse the Germans of robotic precision and a mechanised adherence to data collection and record keeping…

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, October 2008 | In: Strange But True Comments (7) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

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agw says:
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:38 am

Saul:

That would be:
Fliegenschweine

coco says:
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:23 am

‘Of course, it’s all one in the eye for those who accuse the Germans of robotic precision and a mechanised adherence to data collection and record keeping…’

However nobody’s eye ever gets poked out when the UK loses all the Child Benefit data, Defence data, Prison Officers data and even only yesterday a couple of MI5 Spooky-Sleeper Men go and leave a very sensitive yet allegedly encrypted hand-held computer that was in a house from where they were spying on terrorists from in a suburb of Manchester.

I hardly think that we can equate the German’s quaint and charming mistake with our utterly shoddy and bollocksy standards of data-keeping.

And I always preferred to have a BMW than a Rover as well. Who’s still in business???

I wish the Germans would look after our data!

magnetite says:
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm

Thanks to a wayward penalty attempt by me on ‘goal’ - the area below the kitchen window - which knocked my Sky dish out of kilter, it’s about all I can get now. That, and German Dr. Who repeats and some thoroughly diturbing ‘adult’ programming. Viva RTL II!