[HN Gopher] Erfurt Latrine Disaster
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Erfurt Latrine Disaster
Author : rishabhd
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-11-26 13:36 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| Kiboneu wrote:
| > 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.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The Brown Wedding.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| 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.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| 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.
| vidanay wrote:
| Who thought it was a good idea to put the main hall directly
| above the cesspit?
| bombcar wrote:
| The key is they broke the _second_ floor, fell down through the
| _first_ floor, and into the cesspool.
|
| Likely most were knocked unconscious by the fall (that's gonna be
| anywhere from 15-30 feet) and then drowned.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Somehow nobody thought this could have been an assassination. The
| convenience was there. It must have been a relief for King Henry,
| too.
|
| Do the history books tell if there was a sufficiently anal
| investigation and whether they ever got to the bottom of it?
| mypastself wrote:
| tth_tth
| Beauregard wrote:
| Stayed in that town once and they haven't learned a thing. Taking
| my busniness elsewhere.
| [deleted]
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| After that happened, I wonder how the peasants were able to
| recognize a king
| version_five wrote:
| Maybe they didn't know they had a king...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well, he was sitting on a stone part of the floor, so while he
| no doubt got splattered a bit, he didn't have shit _all_ over
| him.
| pskinner wrote:
| King of the who?
| bandyaboot wrote:
| 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.
| ogurechny wrote:
| 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.
| ilovecurl wrote:
| "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.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| 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 plotzlich unter der aussergewohnlichen Last der
| vielen Menschen zusammenbrach. Dabei sturzten die meisten
| Anwesenden in die Tiefe, wo auch der Boden des ersten
| Geschosses dem plotzlichen Aufprall dieser Last nicht
| standhielt, sodass die Herabsturzenden 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.
|
| Btw, this is what this looks like today: https://de.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Erfurter_Dom#/media/Datei:Erfu...
| ogurechny wrote:
| It says it happened in the deanery of a different church in
| the fortress (nitpick: not surrounded by this fortress at
| that time).
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterskirche_(Erfurt)
|
| 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.
| jl6 wrote:
| 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.
| threegates wrote:
| 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.
| danjc wrote:
| 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.
| zby wrote:
| 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.
| TylerE wrote:
| It seems latrine isn't really accurate either. More like an
| (open...) septic tank
| garciansmith wrote:
| 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).
| danjc wrote:
| I was half joking. You just can't make this stuff up
| though.
| jprd wrote:
| I see what you did there.
| [deleted]
| foobarian wrote:
| 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?
| jp57 wrote:
| > King Henry was said to have survived only because he sat in an
| alcove with a stone floor.
|
| I cannot stop imagining this event from his perspective and
| wondering what words might have been spoken just before the
| collapse.
| chihuahua wrote:
| Perhaps it's the origin of the phrase "holy shit!"
| TylerE wrote:
| Nails would have been rather rare in that time period (or any
| time up to about 1700).
|
| They did exist, but weren't generally used as they weren't very
| strong (wrought iron is.. well, not steel) and had to be made by
| hand
| ogurechny wrote:
| Not modern nails and wires, obviously, maybe some slugs holding
| stuff here and there.
| krylon wrote:
| "about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement"
|
| 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.
| ilovecurl wrote:
| I would hazard a guess that many of the victims died from
| hydrogen sulfide poisoning.
| quux wrote:
| Posts like this making it to the front page are why holidays are
| my favorite time to read HN
| oger wrote:
| I keep being impressed by the range of topics appearing on HN
| page one..
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| That's why we all love HN. Seriously. I love that it's not just
| about programming and such.
| amelius wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2022-11-26 23:02 UTC)