Bielefeld a Myth? City Offers €1 Million to Anyone Who Can Prove It

The strangest conspiracy theory in Germany.

Authorities in the German city of Bielefeld have promised one million euros to anyone who can prove the 25-year-old theory that such a city does not exist on the map of Germany.

Any adult German citizen may take part in the contest, which will run until September 5. Submissions with arguments will be considered in various forms — text, video and images.

A local marketing agency has agreed to cover such a large prize for those who do not believe in Bielefeld's existence. The official contest website states that the organizers are 99.99% confident that they can refute any arguments.

Strange? Not really. It all started in 1994, when a student named Achim Held doubted the existence of Bielefeld on Usenet — a distant predecessor of public pages and forums on the World Wide Web.

"Bielefeld? Such a city does not exist," — Held wrote back then, launching a joke that turned into a meme lasting a full 25 years.

In 2012, Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel also joked about Bielefeld during a holiday evening in Berlin. "Still, this city does exist," — Merkel remarked. — I have the impression that I have been there."

Bielefeld — a city in the northeast of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with a population of about 340 thousand people. Bielefeld was founded in 1214 by Count Hermann of Ravensberg.