Special reminders

The German poet Friedrich (von) Schiller received recently received a reminder for the payment of television and radio license feesVery remarkable if you died as early as 1805. And even stranger when you consider that the radio wasn't invented until around 1900.   The reminders ended up at the Friedrich Schiller-Grundschule in Weigsdorf-Köblitz (Saxony). The school principal informed the German agency responsible for collecting the money (GEZ) that the famous poet had been dead for some 200 years. Persistence pays off, GEZ must have thought, because the reminders did not stop. They even asked Schiller to prove that he did not own a radio or television. Eventually, the GEZ admitted its mistake.

Ludovike Simanowiz [Public domain]

Friedrich Schiller was born in 1759 and died in 1805 of a lung ailment. Three years before his death, he was ennobled and allowed to call himself von Schiller. Schiller was not only a gifted poet but also a playwright and philosopher. To gain inspiration, he maintained some peculiar habits. Sometimes he would put his feet in a bucket of ice. And he would sniff the scent of overripe apples, which he kept in a desk drawer. Strange, but it led to beautiful poems such as the famous 'Ode to Joy'. In 2005, 200 years after his death, it was the Schiller Year. In honor of this, various stamps were issued. Among them, a stamp referencing the poem 'Ode to Joy', and a stamp featuring the statue of Schiller standing in Weimar, the place where he lived for a long time. This article was written by Jacqueline van der Pas Hannes Grobe [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)] and Ludovike Simanowiz [Public domain]