I have a file named "18. Versuche an Patienten müssen sich auf eigenes Leiden
beziehen & 19. Schlußbemerkung.odt" which, when I open it in OOo, corrupts
~/.recently-used. This also happens when I create a new OOo document and give it
the same filename.

The first thing that happens when I open this file is that the Locations/Recent
Documents menu becomes disabled. Opening .recently-used in a text editors shows
that the old entries are still present though.

Next, opening a different document after the Recent Document was disabled will
overwrite .recently-used.

Thinking further, opening the problematic file twice could be interesting as it
would logically show only the information about said file.

I did this and while OOo is launching I get this result:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<RecentFiles>
  <RecentItem>
   
<URI>file:///home/jdv/Desktop/18.%20Versuche%20an%20Patienten%20m%FCssen%20sich%20auf%20eigenes%20Leiden%20beziehen%20%26%2019.%20Schlu%DFbemerkung.odt</URI>
    <Mime-Type>application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text</Mime-Type>
    <Timestamp>1135448212</Timestamp>
    <Groups>
    </Groups>
  </RecentItem>

Waiting a bit until OOo is done loading and .recently-used shows this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<RecentFiles>
<RecentItem>
<URI>file:///home/jdv/Desktop/18.%20Versuche%20an%20Patienten%20m%FCssen%20sich%20auf%20eigenes%20Leiden%20beziehen%20&%2019.%20Schlu%DFbemerkung.odt</URI>
<Mime-Type>application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text</Mime-Type>
<Timestamp>1135448224</Timestamp>
<Groups>
<Group>openoffice.org</Group>
<Group>staroffice</Group>
<Group>starsuite</Group>
</Groups>
</RecentItem>
<RecentItem>
<URI>file:///home/jdv/Desktop/18.%20Versuche%20an%20Patienten%20m%FCssen%20sich%20auf%20eigenes%20Leiden%20beziehen%20%26%2019.%20Schlu%DFbemerkung.odt</URI>
<Mime-Type>application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text</Mime-Type>
<Timestamp>1135448212</Timestamp>
</RecentItem>
</RecentFiles>

Observe that unlike what should normally happen, there are _two_ RecentItem entries.

My guess is that due some encoding mismatch (the filename is UTF-8, my $LANG is
set to nl_BE) OpenOffice doesn't find the file it's opening in there, and it
ends up writing a new RecentItem entry. Of course, though, I'm not an OOo hacker.