The Erfurt latrine disaster occurred in July 1184, when Henry VI,

King of Germany This is a list of monarchs who ruled over East Francia, and the Kingdom of Germany (''Regnum Teutonicum''), from the division of the Frankish Empire in 843 and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 until the collapse of the German Empir ...

(later

Holy Roman Emperor The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans ( la, Imperator Romanorum, german: Kaiser der Römer) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period ( la, Imperat ...

), held a ''

Hoftag A ''Hoftag'' (pl. ''Hoftage'') was the name given to an informal and irregular assembly convened by the King of the Romans, the Holy Roman Emperor or one of the Princes of the Empire, with selected chief princes within the empire. Early scholarsh ...

'' (informal assembly) in the

Petersberg Citadel Petersberg Citadel (German:''Zitadelle Petersberg'') in Erfurt, central Germany, is one of the largest and best-preserved town fortresses in Europe.Stadtverwaltung Erfurt (17 November 2017) ''Petersberg'' Retrieved 23 December 2017 The citadel was ...

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits i ...

. On the morning of 26 July, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the building to collapse and most of them fell through into the

latrine A latrine is a toilet or an even simpler facility that is used as a toilet within a sanitation system. For example, it can be a communal trench in the earth in a camp to be used as emergency sanitation, a hole in the ground (pit latrine), or m ...

cesspit A cesspit (or cesspool or soak pit in some contexts) is a term with various meanings: it is used to describe either an underground holding tank (sealed at the bottom) or a soak pit (not sealed at the bottom). It can be used for the temporary co ...

below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid

excrement Feces ( or faeces), known colloquially and in slang as poo and poop, are the solid or semi-solid remains of food that was not digested in the small intestine, and has been broken down by bacteria in the large intestine. Feces contain a relati ...

. This event is called the ''Erfurter Latrinensturz'' () in several German sources.

Background

A feud between Landgrave Louis III of Thuringia and Archbishop Conrad of Mainz, which had existed since the defeat of

Henry the Lion Henry the Lion (german: Heinrich der Löwe; 1129/1131 – 6 August 1195) was a member of the Welf dynasty who ruled as the duke of Saxony and Bavaria from 1142 and 1156, respectively, until 1180. Henry was one of the most powerful German p ...

, 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 Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. Henry decided to call a

diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

in Erfurt, where he was staying, to mediate the situation between the two and invited a number of other figures to the negotiations.

Event

All of the nobles across the Holy Roman Empire were invited to the meeting, and many arrived on 25 July to attend. Just as the assembly began, the wooden floor of the deanery, in which the nobles were sitting, broke under the stress, and people fell down through the first floor into the latrine in the cellar. About 60 people are said to have died, including Count Gozmar III of Ziegenhain, Count Friedrich I of , Burgrave Friedrich I of , Count , Count , Burgmeister Breuer of Wartschitt and Beringer of Meldingen. King Henry was said to have survived only because he sat in an alcove with a stone floor and was later saved using ladders. He departed as soon as possible. Landgrave Louis III of Thuringia survived as well. Of those who died, many drowned in human excrement or suffocated from the fumes emitted by the decomposing waste, while others were crushed by falling debris.

Original texts

''Cronica Reinhardsbrunnensis'', ''MGH''. SS XXX/1, p. 541-542. (in Latin)
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20101004181057/http://www.genealogie-mittelalter.de/ludowinger_landgrafen_von_thueringen/chronik_zu_erfurt.html ''Chronik von St. Peter zu Erfurt'' (In German translation)

References

{{reflist 1184 in Europe 1180s in the Holy Roman Empire 12th-century disasters Building collapses in Germany History of Erfurt Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor