Older cars have all sorts of design solutions for the parking brake.
On my cousin's 1988 760 GLE Turbodiesel, the parking brake is a drum inside the disc. The pad fell off the brake shoe, jammed between the brake and the other pad and locked the wheel. No reversing or other action got it out of there. It was a hell of a job to take this jammed assembly apart, to get the faulty things out. The drum was no longer circular.
Letting the car stay for long durations with the brakes applied I definitely don't recommend. Although it usually gets going again, you can frequently feel the uneven surface on the disc for a while, as you have a rusty part of the disc there. That this will not improve the lifetime of the brakes is easy to understand.
At least the electric solution on these cars have less mechanical parts that can bind.
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