Interesting to think about the horrible ambient smell that must have existed even in these noble-class locations at the time. A wooden floor built over a giant open sewage pit.
My exact thought. Wooden floors — not even strong enough to bear the crowd — and the cesspool large enough to fit 60 people? That's not the place for king's accommodation, even in time when everyone was used to the smell of the stables. If anything, the ammonia would corrode the hell out of any metallic objects in the building, like nails.
Without reading German links, I suppose that either some architect had had a bright idea that a giant 640 KP latrine should be enough for every occupation, and thus wouldn't ever need to be scooped, or that people were mostly crushed by rubble, and the adjacent common-sized latrine also broke.
Though in some periods latrines were used to make certain chemicals, and therefore the building could be seen as what we now call a chemical plant.
Since you mentioned not reading the German version I went and checked and it's got a bit more info, though not a lot.
[...] im oberen Stockwerk der Dompropstei des Marienstiftes zu Rat, als der alte und wohl auch morsche Boden des zweiten Geschosses plötzlich unter der außergewöhnlichen Last der vielen Menschen zusammenbrach. Dabei stürzten die meisten Anwesenden in die Tiefe, wo auch der Boden des ersten Geschosses dem plötzlichen Aufprall dieser Last nicht standhielt, sodass die Herabstürzenden noch tiefer in eine darunter liegende Abtrittgrube fielen [...] andere wurden durch nachfallende Balken und Steine erschlagen oder verletzt.
So this mentions that this building didn't just have a ground floor w/ the latrine below it but one storey above. It's that second storey which was old and rotten and collapsed and broke through the ground floor, which wasn't strong enough to hold sixty people plus the broken top floor crashing into it. Unlike the English version that just mentions people drowning in excrement, this also mentions further falling debris like joists and stone simply hitting and thus killing or at least injuring people.
Its auxiliary buildings are long gone, and even auxiliary buildings from later centuries are long gone, too, and the church itself was converted and rebuilt many times.
So is this a well-known part of popular lore in Germany? I can only imagine that if this had happened in England, every primary school pupil would know about it and there would be a toilet-themed gift shop on the site today.
"Saltpeter" AKA potassium nitrate was indeed harvested from latrines and other places where animal dung was collected/deposited. It was a valuable commodity as a key component of gun powder. Although gun powder would not come into widespread use in Europe for 2-3 hundred years after this event occurred.
Something smells off about this story. It’s got linked references but I can imagine this ending up being disproven as one of those fictitious Wikipedia articles.
The primary sources, both chronicles, are cited in the article, reproduced in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (a series of edited Medieval texts, known for being carefully edited). There could be issues, of course, like the original authors of the chronicles making up the stories, but this isn't just a baseless Wikipedia hoax.
The Chronicle of Reinhardsbrunn, at least, does make specific mention that the nobles fell into a cesspit (cloaca) and died miserably by suffocating in the filth (sceno suffocati miserabiliter interierunt).
Most probably they just died from the fall and only one or two landed in the latrine. But the latrine was the most salient part of the story - so it was what everybody was talking about and then it was recorded that way.
I think a wooden raised platform was built above the ground floor. This gave way and they broke through the ground floor which may have been made of some other material like tiles or something.
I doubt they would have gathered in a place like that if not isolated from the smell.
Since they did not have water toilets, it would not be viscous like sewage. It would have consistency similar to a barnyard manure pile.
To fill a floor to a depth enough to "drown" would require several years of collecting, which means it would be well decayed and much closer to soil than sewage.
> A feud between Landgrave Louis III of Thuringia and Archbishop Conrad of Mainz, which had existed since the defeat of Henry the Lion, intensified to the point that King Henry VI was forced to intervene while he was traveling through the region during a military campaign against Poland. Henry decided to call a diet in Erfurt, where he was staying, to mediate the situation between the two and invited a number of other figures to the negotiations.
So… was the feud resolved at all by the incident? It may have taken key players / drivers out and the absurdity of the situation might have given all parties a reason to pause. On the other hand it could have made it worse. I will investigate behind a proper keyboard in a bit, but if anyone else here knows please quench my curiosity.
I am so sorry to do this, but: What a shitty way to go.
Seriously, though, the though of drowning is terrifying to me when it's clear, fresh water, but drowning in a literal cesspool sounds much worse. I don't know if the poor souls who died in this incident noticed the difference. But it sounds really terrifying. Also, the poor people who had to recover the bodies for a proper burial.
With 900+ years of distance it's easy to chuckle at it, but if you try to put yourself into these people's shoes, it's not funny. OTOH, there were so many awful things going on back then, I wonder if this one really stuck out to anyone but the victims' relatives.
I wonder how people connected to the victims reacted. Perhaps they accused the host of a red wedding type murder? Or perhaps they thought it was divine intervention?
Meta: I find it weird how many HN posts have no connection to either hacking or news, and yet are so tonally perfect for the audience here, and for me personally. I’m thinking specifically of obscure/weird Wikipedia pages and pop history/science articles. This is the stuff that keeps me coming back. Great share.
We are just a bunch of nerds who like to learn about interesting things. I am more interested in this kind of stuff bs a lot of posts about tech stuff which I often find not well written and not interesting.
Surprisingly little information for such an impactful event. How did people respond? Did people not get angry with the king? And I would have expected some architectural information, technical drawings of how this could have happened etc.
