A Terrible Waste

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0:31listening on the free iHeartRadio app today. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Listener discretion advised. Heinrich VI, the 18-year-old King of Germany and son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbosa, sat by a window next to Conrad of Wittelsbach, the Archbishop of Mainz. It was the evening of July 25th, 1184, and the air between the two men was tense. By this point, Heinrich and the Archbishop had run out of things to say to one another. Earlier, when they had first sat down, the conversation had flowed freely. Heinrich had come to Erfurt to broker an agreement between the archbishop and the landgrave Ludwig III of Thuringia.

1:30The two of them had some heated disputes over land rights in Erfurt, but by all accounts, each had come to the negotiations willingly and with high hopes for a quick resolution. Heinrich, the king of Germany, had assembled a Hoftag, an unofficial meeting attended by his court, as well as the local nobility and clergy to settle the matter once and for all. But by this point, however, Heinrich and the Archbishop were not talking about land, titles, or anything at all. The meeting had long since crumbled. So too, quite literally, had the building around them, save for the window alcove where the two men had been sitting.

2:20Now, Heinrich and the Archbishop awaited rescue in horrified silence, holding on for dear life after being forced to watch as their fellow nobles floundered and drowned below them in a roiling pit of mud, debris, and human waste. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The Erfurt Latrine Disaster, as it would come to be called, is remembered as one of medieval history's most disgusting calamities. It was what it sounds like. A building collapsed into its underground latrine cesspit, killing, injuring, or traumatizing the attendees of Heinrich VI's Hofstag. Its effects, both on the lines of noble succession and on local folklore, would ripple out for generations.

3:21In order to understand how this tragic and nauseating accident occurred, we must first understand one of the most significant architectural challenges facing any medieval city, that of dealing with human waste. Many people believe that the Middle Ages were a sort of free-for-all of waste disposal. While it was certainly true that many medieval people had to dispose of their waste by, say, pouring it out of their windows or into the streets, in many places that was actually illegal and could carry heavy fines. As a matter of fact, medieval people, and in particular medieval municipal authorities, devoted a great deal of attention to waste management.

4:11People in the Middle Ages dealt with their waste in a number of different ways. The way you might be most familiar with is the chamber pot, or other kinds of portable toilets. But those, of course, would have left you with the problem of then disposing of the waste from the chamber pots. Luckily, at least in some places, there was another option. A latrine. In this period, a latrine would have consisted usually of a plank of wood over a hole in the ground or in the floor of a building, usually some sort of outhouse, which would let out into something such as a cesspit, a stream, a ditch, a moat, or a drain.

4:55Cesspits were often feats of engineering. While they were sometimes just big holes in the ground, many of them were reinforced with wood, or less often stone, to prevent groundwater pollution. One latrine would often be shared by all of the inhabitants of a given plot of land, although larger multi-hole latrines were sometimes used in monasteries, and some cities, like London, even had public, necessary houses, with multiple latrine holes that opened up into a single cesspit. As you might expect, wealthier people tended to have more elaborately constructed latrines. This applied to the above-ground parts as well, most notably with the construction of latrines inside the home.

5:49If you've ever visited an old castle, for example, you might have seen a little part jutting out from the wall on the outside. That's called a garter robe, and it was basically a medieval toilet. Named after storage closets where valuables or linens would be kept, these would be small chambers that offered the user some privacy. Sometimes these would open up directly to the outside, emptying into a moat or some other drainage system, but often they were connected to a latrine that let out into a cesspit. These systems could be impressive, but of course they were not without their challenges. A cesspit needed proper drainage.

6:34Drainage issues could result in things like contaminated groundwater, but also, and perhaps more urgently, damage to the structure of the latrine and any overlying buildings themselves. Rotting was a major concern for latrines reinforced with wood. Often, cesspits were emptied by hand on an annual or semi-annual basis, or otherwise the waste continually boarded up until a new latrine had to be opened. But some cesspits had more advanced systems of drainage. One solution for the drainage problem was the installation of channel drains, which utilized gravity to let waste out from the cesspit into, say, a flowing river.

7:25These could work marvelously well, but like modern plumbing systems, they were also susceptible to clogs or structural damage. And as the attendees of that fateful hofstag in Erfurt would find out, when channel drain systems failed to work properly, wooden boards began to rot, and nobody took steps to remedy the issue, disaster would ensue. Twelfth-century Germany consisted of a constellation of duchies, counties, and principalities, all loosely aligned under the authority of the Holy Roman Empire. With each duke, count, and prince largely sovereign over his own territory, political life was often tense, as ruling nobles constantly sought to increase their power.

8:20Borders frequently expanded and contracted as wars, shifting alliances, and political machinations saw land pass back and forth between nobles. Of course, these were rarely clean or easy transfers of jurisdiction. It wasn't uncommon for two or more parties to claim sovereignty over the same piece of land at the same time. This was the case for Ludwig III, the Landgrave, a German rank of nobility roughly equivalent to a count of Thuringia, and the Archbishop of Mainz, Conrad of Wittelsbach. Keep in mind that during this period, high-ranking clergy like bishops, archbishops, and cardinals often exercised political as well as religious power in their respective domains.

9:15In this case, Conrad was both the archbishop and the elector of Mainz, a title akin to prince, meaning he both oversaw his own territory and got to play a role in electing the Holy Roman Emperor. The territories of Ludwig's County and Conrad's Archbishopric abutted each other. In fact, they sort of overlapped, with each man claiming his land to be perhaps slightly larger than it was. Their territories had not always been quite so disputed, but around 1179, the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, Heinrich the Lion, was stripped of his holdings by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I Barbosa. This created a power vacuum that resulted in an even more tenuous, contested web of territories than had existed before.

10:15By 1184, five years later, Ludwig and the Archbishop had developed a land dispute over the city of Erfurt that had become so heated it drew the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor. But we don't know much of the details of how this contentious situation developed specifically. Some sources point to the archbishop's construction of a fortified castle in or near the city around 1180, but it's unclear whether that was in fact the inciting incident or simply a move made as part of a pre-existing conflict. In any case, the dispute boiled down to an argument over whether the clergy or the lay nobility should have control over Erfurt.

11:08This was a pressing issue that touched not only on the daily lives of the people living in the city, but also on bigger debates over the rights of religious versus secular powers that had overtaken Europe in the wake of the investiture controversy and the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines that followed. After some four years of conflict over this land, the Holy Roman Emperor had had enough. He sent his son, Heinrich VI, the King of Germany, to mediate the matter in the summer of 1184. Heinrich traveled to Erfurt and called a Hoftag on July 25th, where he would mediate a peace between Ludwig and the Archbishop.

11:56The meeting drew an audience of nobles and high-ranking clergy from all around the area, each of whom sought both to help mediate the meeting and possibly to act in their best interests. Sources disagree over whether the Hofteg was held at the Cathedral Provost's building or the Bishop's residence, but we do know that it was nearby the Erfurt Cathedral and that the meeting took place on the second floor of whatever building it was in. Over 60 people, some sources say over 100, crowded the meeting room as the proceedings began. We know little about how the meeting went. It's possible the nobles shouted over each other, jockeying to get a word in.

12:46Maybe it was a friendly gathering, with everyone acting in good faith, trying to maintain peace and reach a resolution. Maybe it was only getting started, and clergy and nobles were still asking after each other's families and children. We do know that at one point, King Heinrich and the Archbishop walked over to a window to speak privately. Then, all of a sudden, a rumble tore through the building. The walls began to shake, and before the meeting's attendees even realized what was happening, the floor collapsed beneath them. In his Book of German Legends, the 19th century German folklorist Ludwig Beckstein recounted the story of, quote, the Count's proverb.

13:40His story centered on a noble, Count Heinrich VII of Schwarzburg. As Beckstein told it, Count Heinrich had a nasty habit. Whenever there was something he didn't want to do or didn't think he could do, He would say in a huff, quote, If I did that, I'd have to drown in the privy. You can probably see where this story is going. Bechstein's tale was a fictionalized account of the Erfurt latrine disaster, which did actually happen. He altered some of the historical details. It was Count Heinrich I who attended, for example, not the 7th, but the basic contours of the story remained, with an ironic twist in the form of his Heinrich's tragically prescient catchphrase.

14:31In both the story and real life, the second floor of the building collapsed, the force of which collapsed the first floor, and everyone, save for King Heinrich and Archbishop Conrad, fell into the cesspit below. A few survived the fall, but most did not. In reality, we have very few contemporary sources about the actual collapse. And what we do have doesn't offer much in the way of details on how the collapse happened. Later writers supposed that the beams supporting the second floor where the hoftag were held had been rotting for some time, and the weight of so many people caused it to collapse.

15:17Because we don't know which building this was exactly, it's hard for us to know whether a latrine contributed to that rotting. If that were the case, it would have had to have been a wood-reinforced latrine that reached the second floor. It's also possible that the collapse was unrelated and the cesspit was simply an unfortunate landing place for the collapsing building. Either way, the cesspit and its draining system seems to have played an essential role in the tragic way the disaster played out. Some sources say that the building's cesspit had a channel drain system, which would have emptied out into the nearby Gera River.

16:04This would have meant that when everything collapsed, the sudden inflow of materials and bodies would have forced the entire system to flow wildly and uncontrollably out to the river. The result was a whirling pit of death. Most estimates say about 60 of the meeting's attendees died as a result of the collapse. Some died from the fall, others were crushed by debris, and others were, I'm sorry, drowned in the sewage or asphyxiated in its toxic fumes. The Chronicle of St. Peter's in Erfurt, which began to be compiled about 25 years after the fact in 1208, listed some of the noblemen who died in the collapse.

16:56Count Friedrich I of Abenberg, Count Heinrich I of Schwarzburg, Count Gosmar III of Ziegenhain, Gosmar's brother-in-law, Bugrave Friedrich I of Kirchberg, Count Burkhardt of Wartburg, and Berenger von Wellington, among other, quote, lesser nobles whom the chronicler felt were not necessary to record. Landgrave Ludwig, one of the main two parties involved in the dispute that was a reason for all of this, fell into the sewage but luckily was rescued and survived, seemingly with no major injuries. King Heinrich and the Archbishop had to cling to the window as they awaited rescue, but they also eventually escaped unharmed.

17:47Disgusted and shell-shocked, King Heinrich departed from Erfurt with his retinue almost immediately, never to return. In addition to its relatively quick entrance into the annals of local folklore, the Erfurt latrine disaster impacted the lines of succession of much of the local nobility, as estates passed to sons, brothers, and even daughters of the deceased. As for the dispute between Landgrave Ludwig and Archbishop Conrad, that remains unsolved to this day. That's the very gross story of the Erfurt latrine disaster, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about another interesting thing that happened in a pit in Erfurt.

19:07By Order of the Faithfuls app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:17If I had a gold ingot for every time something noteworthy happened in a pit in Erfurt, well, I'd have two gold ingots. Actually, in fact, in 1998, archaeologists excavated 14 gold ingots, among other treasures, hidden in the wall of a medieval cellar entry under the Michaelestras, a small street in Erfurt where the structure of a medieval synagogue had been discovered during excavations a few years prior. It was an extraordinary discovery. In addition to the gold ingots, there were over 3 ,000 Tornesel silver coins, a kind of coin commonly used in the Middle Ages and early modern periods, constituting the largest extant collection of these kind of coins in the world.

20:10There were also 700 works of goldsmithing dating to the 13th and 14th centuries. There was silver tableware, gilded goblets from the early 14th century, garment appliques and belt adornments, eight brooches with inlaid stones, and eight rings. The most magnificent of the rings, and the most telling about the cash and its history, was an Ashkenazi Jewish wedding ring, one of the very few to survive from the 14th century and one of the very few to be found in Germany. The ring was struck in gold without any stones, as was tradition, and featured an intricate engraving of a Gothic tower, and above it, the Hebrew phrase mazel tov, meaning good fate or good fortune, a phrase of congratulations traditionally offered at significant life events, like weddings.

21:11It is this ring which seems to have allowed scholars to figure out where this mass of treasure came from and begin to guess at who might have hidden In 1349, as the Black Death tore throughout Europe, many communities found a convenient scapegoat in Jewish people, blaming them for causing the pandemic or believing that they facilitated its spread. There are many reasons why these theories developed, but the most significant impact was the widespread murders and exiles of European Jewish communities. In March 1349, the city of Erfurt did just that. In what came to be known as the Erfurt Massacre, between March 21st and 22nd, mobs lynched anywhere from 100 to 3 ,000 Jewish people throughout the city.

22:11As the violence erupted, many members of the Jewish community chose to set fire to their homes and possessions, choosing death over the violence of the mob. Others chose to hide their possessions, potentially hoping that perhaps they could escape and come back for them later. It is believed that one of them, potentially a money changer or merchant named Kalman Ville, hid his treasure before he was killed. either hoping that he would survive the mob and be able to retrieve it, or knowing that his murderers would not be able to profit from his death. Following the massacre, the remaining members of the Jewish community were exiled from the city.

22:57They would return a few years later and re-establish a new community in the city before being exiled again in 1458. The hidden treasure, however, remained in Erfurt, untouched and intact for over 600 years. Today, it remains on permanent display at the restored old synagogue, just steps from where it was found.

23:48The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk. with supervising producer Rima Ilkayali and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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