Cash-strapped Berlin stalked by 540-year-old debt

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BERLIN: The sleepy community of Mittenwalde in eastern Germany could turn a single of a richest towns in a world if Berlin were to pay off it an outstanding debt which dates behind to 1562.

A certificate of debt, found in a informal archive, attests which Mittenwalde lent Berlin 400 guilders upon May 28 1562, to be repaid with 6 percent seductiveness per year.

According to Radio Berlin Brandenburg (RBB), a debt would volume to 11,200 guilders today, which is rounded off equivalent to 112 million euros ($ 136.79 million).

Adjusting for devalue seductiveness as well as inflation, a total debt right away lies in a trillions, by RBB's estimates.

Town historian Vera Schmidt found a centuries-old debt slip in a archive, where it had been filed in 1963. Though a seal is missing from a document, Schmidt told Reuters which she was certain a slip was still valid.

"In 1893 there was a discuss in which a document was carefully thought about as well as a writing was dynamic to be authentic," Schmidt said.

Schmidt as well as Mittenwalde's Mayor Uwe Pfeiffer have attempted to ask Berlin for their income back. Such requests have been made every 50 ! years or so given 1820 but regularly to no avail.

Reclaiming a debt would move significant cache to Mittenwalde, a chair of power in the middle ages, which right away has a race of just 8,800. Red brick fragments of Gothic fortifications still dot a shaggy locale center.

The town's Romanesque church was once a provost chair for Paul Gerhardt, a single of Germany's most prolific strain writers. Gerhardt, who lived there quickly in a 17th century, is a only remarkable Mittenwalde resident to date.

Schmidt as well as Pfeiffer met with Berlin's fina! nce sena tor Ulrich Nussbaum, who ceremonially handed them a chronological guilder from 1539. The guilder was put in a proxy display during a Mittenwalde museum.

"This box shows which debts regularly catch up with you, no make a difference how aged they are," Nussbaum told a Berliner Zeitung paper.

The debt-laden German capital would have difficulty meeting Mittenwalde's demands anyway. According to a inform released by a parliament finance administration in June 2012, Berlin is already close to 63 million euros in a red.

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