Voting for the "best German of all time" got off to a shaky start yesterday after the Austrian ambassador to Germany complained that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose name appears on a list of eligible candidates, is Austrian.
The ambassador, Christian Prosl, was indignant after he saw Mozart's name on the list of 300 potential candidates as the competition organised by the German television station ZDF got started.
Mr Prosl said: "Mozart is naturally an Austrian. I would say that this is a case of misguided nationalism."
Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756 and died in Vienna in 1791. The confusion is caused by the fact that until the founding of the Second Reich in 1871, Germans lived in a confederation of independent city-states allied with the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Modern reference books refer to Mozart as an "Austrian composer" but if the composer himself had been asked, he would probably have said his nationality was German - the nation-state was a vague concept and individuals associated themselves more with ethnic groups.
Copying the BBC series Great Britons, shown last autumn and won by Winston Churchill, the German version has opted for the less offensive name of Our Best and, unlike the British version, drew up a list of suggested candidates.
For good reason: a more obvious Austrian candidate is missing. Adolf Hitler was born in the Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, near the Austro-German border, but his name, as well as those of other prominent Nazis, was not included on the list.
"We are looking for the best among ourselves and Hitler clearly doesn't fit into that category," said Thomas Hargerdorn, the spokesman for the German show.
"This is supposed to bring out the positive aspects of German culture, so his name has been excluded."
The consequences of Germany's historically mobile borders have made suggesting candidates a nightmare for the producers. The list has managed to annoy several other countries and sent diplomats scrambling for their history books.
"It was much easier for the British as they live on an island," Mr Hargerdorn said, "but for us the constantly moving borders have caused a lot of problems."
Even Mr Hargerdorn admits that Sigmund Freud's eligibility is "borderline". Freud was born in 1856 in Pribor, which is now part of the Czech Republic and at the time only part of a German league. Freud spent most of his working life in Vienna before emigrating to London where he died in 1939.
The case for including Nicolaus Copernicus, the first astronomer to suggest that the earth goes round the sun, is even more questionable.
"He is Polish. At least that is what they taught us at school," said a spokesperson at the Polish embassy in Berlin. "Parts of Poland did belong to Germany, but that was later."
Copernicus's father was from Krakow and he was born in the Polish town of Torun in 1473. He studied briefly at the university of Bologna in Italy before returning to Poland where he died in 1543 in the town of Frombork.
Historians could argue that the patch of land Copernicus lived on was German enough to make him eligible.
The only thing that qualifies the actor Gojko Mitic is his passport. Much loved by a whole generation of east Germans, Mitic was born in Serbia and came to East Germany as a young man where he quickly became the heartthrob of the DDR by playing a Native American in a series of socialist westerns.
"Mitic is eligible because he made his career in Germany and was an East German citizen when the wall came down. That is the second criteria we have used to draw up the list," Mr Hargerdorn said.
Frontrunners and faux pas
Contenders include:
Musicians
Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Richard Strauss, Wagner, punk star Nina Hagen ... and Mozart
Writers
Brecht, Goethe, Hesse, Mann, Grass and the Brothers Grimm
Thinkers
Einstein, Engels, Hegel, Heidegger, Kant, Luther, Marx, Nietsche ... and Freud
Today's celebs
Boris Becker, Steffi Graf, Karl Lagerfeld, Claudia Schiffer, Michael Schumacher