Short Stuff: Erfurt Latrine Disaster

A terrible thing happened in Germany in the summer of 1184.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Chuck's here too, Jerry's here too, Dave's not. That's okay
because Jerry's here covering for him. And this is stuff
you should know, short stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's right. And we're going to issue a trigger warning
on this one. You see, they're in the title the
words latrine disaster. So I don't think we need to
overexplain what's coming.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
No, if you're easily grossed out, then be careful with this.
When I was researching and writing this one, I noticed
that my stomach was actually upset, so it really places. Yeah,
and I'm not easily I have a fairly iron stomach
when it comes to stuff, and this one got me
a little bit. So. But let's start at the start.
We're going to go all the way back to eleven
eighty four CE, nearly a thousand years ago, and we're

(00:47):
gonna go to is it Thuringia.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
I guess I'd never heard of that word, but that's
probably right.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
So it's a state that's still around in Germany, almost
smack dab in the center of modern day Germany, and
in THURINGI. In eleven eighty four there was a dispute.
The reason for the dispute is lost to history, but
we know that it was between Ludwig II, who was
Landgrave aka Prince of Thuringia, so he's a very powerful

(01:14):
person in the region and the other guy, the other
disputant was Conrad of Vittelsbach, who was at the time
the arch Bishop of Mainz, who was also a very
powerful person in the reason region.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
That's right, And like you said, we don't know exactly why,
and frankly, it doesn't matter as far as this story goes.
What matters is during this time, this is the High
Middle Ages, that was the King of Germany, Einrich the
what is that sixth He would eventually become the Holy
Roman Emperor. He knew this was coming, so he was

(01:50):
on a sort of campaign to lobby different rulers in
various lands to say, hey, let's change the line of
succession for the whole Roman emperor to where bloodline is
the key instead of just being crowned by the pope
because I'm in that bloodline. And so he was trying
to just get people on board with his plan as

(02:11):
kind of the backdrop there.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, and that would have taken a huge amount of
power from the pope, so it was a pretty big deal,
and surprisingly he was fairly successful at raising support from
it around the kingdom. But there was some holdouts still
and a lot of them were concentrated in the Thuringia area.
So when he heard about this dispute between Ludwig and Conrad,
he saw an opportunity to basically show up and act

(02:35):
fairly kingly and mediate and hopefully resolve the dispute. So
he would be killing two birds with one stone by
showing up in the town of Erfurt, which is the
capital of Thuringia, which he did in July of eleven
eighty four, and he convened what's called a hoffpug. I'm
just killing it with the German pronunciations today. If I
do say so myself, I.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
May just go tab a nap. You're doing so great, thanks.
So a hoftag is just like an assembly, like an
informal assembly, not a formal meeting. And there were a
lot of the local rulers. Some of them came because
they were told to, as you know, because of this dispute.
Some were just like, hey, the King's going to be there,
maybe I can get some FaceTime, which is exactly what

(03:17):
he wanted, and it was held very Keighley.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Sure it works.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Here's another word, I just can't find it again morning recording. Importantly,
sure it was held at Petersburg Citadel, which was a
fortress there in Airfort, still there today. It was about
fifteen years old at that time. And even more key
to this is the latrine layout. And maybe we'll take

(03:46):
a little break and talk about that layout right after this.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
So, Chuck, now's the point where we talk about medieval
latrine design, which I know way more about today than
I did just a couple of days ago.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Good band name, yeah, I mean it's actually a terrible
band name, but a band.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Name, right, a band name well put yeah. So around
during the medieval era, especially this time in the High
Middle Ages, which is what we're talking about today, there
are a bunch of different latrine designs, and probably some
of the fanciest were latrines where the actual restroom where
you relieved yourself was essentially a little alcove just off

(04:53):
of like a hallway or just very importantly off of
the banquet room, because it was considered rude at the time,
at least in parts of Germany. To excuse yourself from
the table during a dinner. The problem was these dinners
were really, really long, and so the solution was to
just put the latrines right by the table so that
you can continue on with your conversation while you were

(05:15):
relieving yourself in this doorless restroom. That was the norm,
not excusing yourself from the table and going to use
a bathroom way far away from the table.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, exactly. The toilet seats is sort of what you
might imagine from a latrine. It was wooden, there was
a hole cut in the center. They did have a
masonry basin that would direct the stuff downward. And you know,
they would wipe their butts with hay or grass or
moss or something like that. It must be nice, it
must be okay, like a nice green moss.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
A big clump of it.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah. But suffice to say, these rooms were disgusting and smelly.
The ammonia could get so bad. Sometimes they would hang
their clothes near there because they thought they may be
right about this, that it could ammonia could kill mite.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, just the smell.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, So hang your clothes up near there. And what
would happen if you look at the outside of a
castle a lot of times these restrooms were projected outward
from the wall itself a little bit. There was a
hole in the bottom, and the waste just dropped out
of that.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Just trickle down the sides of the castle, the walls
of it. And I guess it depends on how far
the alcove was projected off of the castle walls. But
I would guess without these tubes that later evolved to
kind of deposit it more cleanly towards the ground, especially
in a wind, that waste would just kind of trickle

(06:41):
down the castle walls, I guess, is what I'm trying
to say.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, and it would go maybe just be washed away
to whatever water is nearby. If you were unlucky, you
might have a moat full of that. You did mention tubes. Eventually,
in places like France they would actually have like plumbing
pie on the outside of the walls to make it
just a little neater. But then they found out, hey,

(07:06):
people can climb up these pipes to gain access to
the castle, so those aren't good.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah. In twelve oh three there was a siege of
Chateau Gallard and the invaders actually climbed up the sewage
pipes into the castle to gain access. Do you know
how badly you want to get into a place to
climb up a medieval waste pipe through the latrine, All the.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Waist is at least the inside of the pipe.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Right, I think that you had to climb up the
inside of the pipe to get into the castle.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Oh. I thought that. I pictured it as like a
pipe running down the outside of the castle, that they
would just climb up.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yes, but eventually all you're doing is hanging out on
the outside wall of the castle.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
I hadn't actually considered your your interpretation, and it's possible,
that's right. My mind just immediately went to the idea
that they had to tunnel up through the inside of
the pipe.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Oh, like Andy defrayin and I'll shankredption.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, yeah, which is probably I'm sure Stephen King was
inspired by the Chateau Gillard story.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
That's right, all right, So none of that really matters,
because all that matters is that's how it worked in
some places. But in this particular Petersburg Citadel, it didn't
work like that at all. It worked like this as
there was a latrine and you did your poopoo and
your peepee, and it just went right under the floor
into a disgusting cesspool that would maybe be cleaned out

(08:31):
once a year by some very unfortunate servants.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah. Can you imagine, like you'd have to get in
there with buckets and rakes and have to clean it
out because of this kind of cesspool that would be
like just a pit in the basement. They usually had
some like slits in the top between you know, the
foundation of the or in the foundation of the castle,
so that they could only get so full before they
kind of overflowed. But that means that there was always

(08:57):
some in there that you had to kind of clean out.
And I just can't imagine doing that. Because it turns
out that in the Petersburg Citadel, the latrine was in
the basement, so the floor above the latrine, we would
guess the first floor, that's where the hoftog was was held.

(09:18):
And even though the Petersburg Citadel was built just like
fifteen years before, there were so many people not just nobles,
but all of the attendees and advisors that each noble
brought with them, that the floor actually collapsed and sent
a lot of people into the cesspool below.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah. I mean they say that between sixty and one
hundred people died, So I mean what percentage of that
was of the total people, Like, was it hundreds and
hundreds of people in there or did most of them die?

Speaker 1 (09:51):
So I have the impression that a significant portion I'm
just guessing here, a significant portion died because sixty to
one hundre undred people, like you said, that was just
the nobles whose deaths were recorded. Remember each noble had
multiple people with him. So yeah, ostensibly hundreds of people

(10:13):
died from falling into the cesspool, and one of the
main ways they would have died is from drowning, probably
being held under by other people climbing over them to
try to get out of this cesspool. And honestly, you
can't really blame those people for reacting like that.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
No, you're trying to get out of there. You're stepping
on the nobleman next to you's head to get out
of there.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Is Burger King Crown.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, exactly. There was one source you found that said
someone may have died from stench, and that may have
been like an ammonia death. If the ammonia level was
higher than I think you found five thousand parts per million,
they could have suffered from a respiratory arrest and died.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, and that's a significant amount. I think at zero
point two parts per million, humans can start to detect
it by smell, so you can imagine how how crazy
five thousand parts per million would be. But yeah, I mean,
if they're using ammonia in the actual restrooms above to
kill mites, who knows. It's entirely possible that some people
did die like that.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
But my friend, what happened with the Hofftag? Did it
kill all of our major players?

Speaker 1 (11:23):
No? What's astounding is that all three of the major players, Heinrich, Conrad,
and Ludwig all survived.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
That's I mean, it's just dumb luck. Basically, I think
Heinrich and Conrad had stepped into an alcove that wasn't
on that floor that collapsed, and I don't think anyone
knew where Ludwig was at the time, at least that
it's not recorded in history. But we know Ludwig survived.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, his death was recorded at six years after the
air for lutrine disaster, so somehow he survived. But we
know he survived, And the fact that Heinrich didn't die
is considered by historians who talk about this sort of
thing is a world changing event because, like we said,
he went on to become Holy Roman Emperor. He also became,

(12:08):
and this is a hat tip to our friends at
Historic Mysteries who I got this from, he went on
to become the king of Burgundy, Italy and Sicily. He
became feudal overlord of the kings of England, Lesser Armenia
and Cyprus, and tributary lord of North African princes.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Geez, yeah, he got around.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, and he became overlord of England because he captured
or held Richard the First hostage and that's Richard the
Lionheart from the robin Hood myths, and as ransom he said,
I'll let you go, but you have to give me
control over your kingdom in England, and Richard the First
reluctantly agreed.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Richard the First should have said, man, he almost died
in a pool of poop, that's right. From What's remarkable
to me is that if you go to the Petersburg
cit at a website, they do not say anything about
this amazing amazing they grow amazing story. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
The other thing that's a little hinky about it is
that I could not for the life of me find
even a reference to the name of a primary source
for this, So I have no idea where it came from.
If it's made up, it has become fat so thoroughly
that again historians write about this kind of thing like
everyone talks about it, from you know, BBC History Extra

(13:24):
to ninety two point three rock radio Stations website for
some reason.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Wow, Well, maybe one day we'll do a follow up
called the Latrine disaster hoax.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Maybe maybe we'll find out one day.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Good story. It was written by a seven year old German.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Apparently that's right in twenty eighteen. Yeah, let's see, it's it.
We just kind of stopped talking about the disaster, which
means short stuff is out.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
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Speaker 1 (13:59):
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