In a clerical error to end all clerical errors, a German mathematician named Adam Ries who died 450 years ago has been sent a letter demanding payment for long-overdue television license fees! Read on for more details.
According to
news sources, algebra expert, Adam Reis, did own and live in the home where the Germany's GEZ broadcast fee collection office sent the bill, but being indisposed for the last four centuries and then some, there was little hope that he could accommodate the request for payment even if in life he had been a most responsible citizen! Ries bought the house in 1525, and four hundred years later, a club was set up at the property in his honor.
In the words of club master, Annegret Muench:
“We received a letter saying 'To Mr Adam Ries' on it, with the request to pay his television and radio fees.”
Muench returned the letter to the GEZ with a note explaining that an error had been made due to the inconvenient fact that Mr. Ries had died in 1559, centuries before the invention of television and radio. Nonetheless, a few weeks later, she received a reminder for payment, which was, of course, still very much overdue.
Apparently, being dead is no excuse for not paying one’s bill, as this was not the first time the GEZ had sent a bill to those long passed to the other side of the sod. Last year, a school named after poet, Friedrich Schiller, received a reminder asking him to declare all radios and televisions in his home and pay the corresponding fees!
Go figure.
