Bielefeld Conspiracy

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The Bielefeld Conspiracy (in German, Bielefeld-Verschwörung) is a running gag among German Internet users, especially in the German Usenet. It is an obviously satirical story rather than a hoax or an urban legend.

1 Contents
2 Background of this “theory”
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Contents

The story goes that the city of Bielefeld (population 330,000) in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia does not actually exist. Rather, its existence is merely propagated by an entity known only as SIE or IHNEN (German third person addressing for they and them), which has conspired with authorities to create the illusion of the city’s existence. The reason for this conspiracy is unknown, but the most common theory claims that Bielefeld hides an alien base.

The conspiracy theory was first made public in a posting to the newsgroup de.talk.bizarre on May 16, 1994, by Achim Held, a student of computer science at the University of Kiel. From there, it spread throughout the German-speaking Internet community and has lost little of its popularity after more than 10 years.

In a television interview conducted for the 10th anniversary of the newsgroup posting, Held stated that he got the idea for the conspiracy theory during a student party while speaking to an avid reader of New Age magazines. There are a number of conflicting theories about its inception, the most popular being a flame war between Usenet admins and the Bielefeld based Z-Netz BBS about text encodings.

[edit] Background of this “theory”

This theory can be understood as an allusion to the popularity of conspiracy theories, a cultural phenomenon that became well-known in Germany with the broadcasts of the U.S. television series The X-Files (German: Akte X) in 1994.
As Bielefeld is located at the center of an otherwise rural region in the middle of Germany, has little visible history due to heavy bombardments during World War II, a population speaking no dialect and few obvious tourist attractions, most Germans have no clear image of the city in their heads. The city council of Bielefeld tries hard to subsidize development of and publicity for Bielefeld, but despite all the efforts, the city has a solid reputation for obscurity seldom found in a city its size and has been the butt of jokes before (compare the nearby city of Hannover for an example of an even larger city with a similar fate).
Bielefeld resides on the highly important passage between the Ruhrgebiet and Berlin, with one of the highest volume autobahn in Germany (A2) and ICE high-speed railway, so a lot of people pass through Bielefeld without actually seeing any significant parts of the city. This is especially true for travellers on the A2 autobahn, which only passes through the city’s outskirts. Bielefeld's railway station is in the city centre, but has been under constant renovation for years, giving it a suspiciously provisional feel.

[edit] References

Germany's Latest Conspiracy Theory at the Deutsche Welle website

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