Till Backhaus

Till Backhaus (born Neuhaus 13 March 1959) is a German politician. As the German Democratic Republic approached its end as a standalone state, Backhaus was one of those who in December 1989 (re-)founded the Social Democratic Party, more than four decades after its suppression. before moving on, in 1980, to the University of Rostock where he concluded his studies, in 1985, with a degree in Agricultural engineering. and was a co-founder of its Neuhaus (Elbe) district branch. When, after German reunification in October 1990, the eastern and western branches of the SPD came together into a single national party, Backhaus remained an active party leader in the locality.

Other activities Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank, Member of the Supervisory Board Landgesellschaft Mecklenburg-Vorpommern mbH, Chairman of the Supervisory Board

The long word Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is a relatively rural state and the Agriculture ministry has given Backhaus a high ministerial profile in the region. In 1999 his department came up with a legislative proposal which broke records for an unusual reason.

The Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (a law on the supervision of beef labelling) is defined using a grammatically valid and usable compound noun of 63 letters. The word featured in the Guinness Book of Records until 1996 when it was controversially challenged for the top spot by the creation of a longer word. But for many the word created by Backhaus's ministry was toppled from its position as Germany's longest official word only in 2013 when it was withdrawn from use by the regional assembly because the law it defined had been repealed.

Controversies In 2015, as the minister responsible, Backhaus was called upon to make a ministerial statement after the (presumably temporary) closure of Rostock zoo in the wake of a bird flu scare which had necessitated the precautionary killing of storks, ducks and a red ibis. Nor was this the first bird flu scare in the region to necessitate ministerial intervention. In the preceding fifteen years his intervention has frequently been invoked in other food, agriculture and environment related scares.

A more personal media controversy arose in respect of the Doctorate in Agriculture which Backhaus received from Berlin's Humboldt University in 2001. His dissertation was entitled "Reflections on Grain Production in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern between 1900 and 2000". Sources are silent over when the work was started, but public reaction may have been triggered by the fact that by the time he actually received the doctorate Backhaus had already been the regional Minister for Agriculture for more than two years. The Agriculture Scientist Wilhelm Römer went public with his opinion that the dissertation was an "insubstantial compilation" without "formal scientific substance" ("substanzlos[es] Machwerk ... [der] ... weder inhaltlich noch formal wissenschaftlichen Ansprüchen [entspräche]"). There was also criticism that the dissertation had been supervised in 2000 and 2001 by Norbert Makowski, a distinguished plant-scientist who at the time was alleged to have been undertaking paid consultancy work indirectly involving the ministry.

Personal life Till Backhaus has three children from two of his three marriages. He married his third wife, Ivonne Menzel, in June 2012. Press attention focused not on her career as a dentist, but on her youth and her recent celebrity as a beauty queen.