Germany Sehr geehrter Herr Coignard, 8 December 2025 These words began one of the letters I recently discovered in my (physical) letterbox. In this note, I’ll explain how it came to pass that my surname has only been displayed on my letterbox since the beginning of December. It’s rather easy to deduce that I was once called by a different name, since I explicitly reference my previous name in my weblog’s description. And, of course, I’ve already written several notes here about this. Yes, it’s simply how things turned out historically that the matter of one’s chosen name has always been extraordinarily important to me: we don’t choose to be born, and it would be especially frustrating to go through one’s entire life under a name that someone else also chose for you. But that’s not the point. My passport states my old name, and I’ve no intention of changing that in future: it’s a rather handy little life cheat-code, thanks to which one can easily switch contexts. If someone addresses me by my old name, I know it’s either the state or someone from work. My new name, however, is what all my acquaintances, friends, and family call me. This division could also be observed in the physical realm: for instance, my letterbox at home was, until recently, labelled with my passport surname, whilst postcards and other letters addressed to my new name I collected from my PO Box at the post office. Let’s discuss that today. One Friday, as usually happens on this day of the week, I was strolling through Wolfen’s Altstadt to check my post box. There I discovered a couple of letters from Deutsche Post, in which the postal service informed me that some letters couldn’t be delivered to the PO Box, and that the postman couldn’t find a letterbox for the surname Coignard at my home address. The post office instructed me to sort this matter out, that is, to ensure my new surname was placed on the letterbox, "otherwise we’ll terminate our contract with you without further notice." No problem: I picked up a set of stickers at Kaufland, stamped out the surname with a letter stamp set, and stuck it on both the letterbox and the doorbell button. All that remained was to bring this arrangement into more respectable form, so I wrote to my contact person at the housing cooperative where I rent my flat, explaining that, well, this and that, the post office sent a letter, I’ve stuck a sticker with the surname on, please be aware, and I’ve done a bit of legal research on why I’m permitted to do this, and here’s a link to our contract as well: there was a clause in the Hausordnung section stating that notification isn’t required if it concerns ordinary nameplates, and that the landlord wouldn’t object as long as it doesn’t damage the property. Naturally, in addition to my own investigation, I consulted with my lawyer, referencing everything I’d studied, and my lawyer confirmed that yes, my arguments were sound, everything was spot on. A bit later the housing cooperative replied, saying they’d heard me, their lawyer was now looking into the matter, and they’d write back with the results. What concerned them: firstly, without notification they might have accidentally spotted the sticker themselves and thought I’d decided to secretly organise a sublet without informing them. Secondly, Germany has this thing called the Einwohnermeldeamt, the residents’ registration office, and rather strict registration laws. Any surname suddenly appearing on a letterbox that the landlord knows nothing about is a rather enormous red flag for the cooperative: they might think someone unregistered has decided to live there, which carries the threat of fines for them if that turns out to be the case. Actually, in my letter I paid particular attention to proving that Podivilov and Coignard are one and the same person. In the letter I provided evidence of using my name: for instance, in the ISNI registry the name René Coignard explicitly references Mikhail Podivilov, and an ORCID identifier is also listed there. References to my website and my works, where I’d used this name, proved sufficient. To make things easier for them, I designated this name as a Künstlername, literally a creative pseudonym. Incidentally, after obtaining German citizenship I’ll have the opportunity to include this name in a special field in the passport reserved for Künstlername: the law explicitly permits this. Eventually, after a bit of time, when the housing cooperative’s lawyer had examined my case, he agreed with my arguments and I was delighted to learn that the nameplate on my letterbox would be updated. At the beginning of last week, one day I returned home and discovered they’d indeed updated it, and now it reads: | Mikhail Podivilov | aka René Coignard Prima! In the end everyone’s satisfied: the landlord, the Einwohnermeldeamt, Deutsche Post, and me. My postal address is available a few notes below, so do send postcards to mark such a momentous occasion, perhaps. Both Mikhail Podivilov and René Coignard would be absolutely delighted. I guarantee it. Copyright (c) 2025 contact@renecoignard.com Powered by Weblog v1.19.0