Bielefeld-Verschwörung

A running-gag among German Internet users, especially in the German Usenet, claims that there is a Bielefeld-Verschwörung (German for "Bielefeld conspiracy"). THEY try to influence people to believe there is a city called Bielefeld in Germany, and all authorities have conspired to create wrong hints of its existence. The reason for this conspiracy is unknown, the most common theory claims that Bielefeld hides an alien base.

The conspiracy theory was started in late 1993 by Achim Held, a student of computer science at the University of Kiel. When driving to Essen he saw a highway exit to Bielefeld was closed due to road construction, and the struck out city name was then interpreted as a sign that there is no such city. He expanded this into the full theory, and after he posted his text to the newsgroup de.talk.bizarre in May 16, 1994, it quickly grew into German Internet folklore.

The actual source of this conspiracy theory was the dispute between the Bielefeld based Z-Netz and the Usenet, which used incompatible ways to encode the newsgroup postings. Among the serious flame wars the Bielefeld conspiracy marked the funny side of the dispute.

External link

Google archived version of first newsgroup posting (German)