Great plague (Prussia)

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The Great Plague from 1709 to 1711 was as part of the Great Plague 1708-1714 , the most consequential plague epidemic in the territory of the Kingdom of Prussia . A third of the population and all of agriculture fell victim to it. The disease also claimed numerous victims in the rest of the Baltic Sea region , in Pomerania , Sweden and the Baltic States .

prehistory

Lucas David already reported of major epidemics in which the old Prussians "read the Irish completely" and fled into the woods. There were plague epidemics in 1398, 1405 and 1416. In 1352, 5,078 people died in the plague in Königsberg . In 1529, English sweat claimed 25,000 deaths in Königsberg and East Prussia. In 1549, 15,000 people died in the plague in Königsberg and East Prussia. Nevertheless, the Duchy of Prussia came to rest and prosperity in the 16th and 17th centuries. While the so-called Tatar storm in 1656/57 brought great hardship, the plague was the greatest affliction at the beginning of the 18th century. In the cold and long winters from 1706 to 1708, the winter crops froze to death, which led to high prices and famine and encouraged the spread of the plague. The even more severe winter of 1708/09 increased the misfortune. The first terrible news came from pillupons . After another bad harvest in the summer of 1709, the epidemic spread quickly. Inadequate isolation measures, uncleanliness, indifference and superstition of the population contributed to this.

Unsuccessful defense

In 1707 the epidemic in Cracow and Warsaw took on such dire forms that measures against its introduction were stepped up in Prussia. The security forces were doubled at the border, which was very permeable at the time. Travelers from Poland were placed in a longer quarantine . The luggage had to be disinfected . In the summer of 1708 all traffic with Poland was forbidden; no one was allowed to cross the border under threat of the death penalty. Königsberg was completely cordoned off.

In one saw lousy clothes a possible cause and ordered so that clothes, wool and beds were burning from Poland at the border crossing. Letters from contaminated areas also had to be burned unopened. The Prussian residents were supposed to provide themselves with food for four to six months so that they would have enough food if neighboring areas were cordoned off. The security measures went so far that paths were blocked with spanking or Spanish riders , bridges - for example over the border river Scheschuppe - destroyed and paths made impassable by digging. Despite these measures, it could not be prevented that the plague also entered the Kingdom of Prussia. In August 1708 it had approached the border near Soldau in southern Masuria . A few days later she crossed the Prussian border near Hohenstein (East Prussia) . In panic , the residents fled into the woods. 400 people died of the plague in the town within two months. In addition, there was the millennium winter of 1708/1709 , which led to a bad harvest and famine in 1709.

consequences

Many villages such as Kellmienen became deserted within a few days. The places Nemmersdorf and Grünweiden and the settlements bordering on Gumbinnen Johannlauken, Balerlauken and Luzellen lost all inhabitants. If they hadn't died of the plague , they either starved to death or fled. Their houses, barns and stables fell into disrepair.

Of the 600,000 to 700,000 people in the kingdom, the plague killed 200,000 to 250,000, more than a third of the population. 9,827 people, a quarter of the population, died in the locked Königsberg. The Gumbinnen district had to make the greatest sacrifices ; four fifths of all deaths were recorded in this easternmost part of Prussia. 10,834 farms were deserted, 8,411 of them in the offices of Insterburg , Ragnit , Tilsit and Memel . The Insterburg office had the largest share of this with 4,620 plague victims. The surviving peasants were ruined or, as in the Gumbinnen district, almost completely disappeared. Trade and industry were ruined.

It was not until 1710 that the Great Plague died out in Prussia. In the last years of his reign, King Friedrich I initiated the rétablissement of the country and settled Swiss colonists in Gumbinnen as early as 1709 . His successor, Friedrich Wilhelm I , did the repetition and reconstruction with all his might and in 1731 brought Salzburg exiles into the country.

literature

  • Katrin Möller-Funck: The crisis in the crisis. Existential threat and social recession in the Kingdom of Prussia at the beginning of the 18th century . Dissertation, University of Rostock, 2015 ( PDF ).
  • Wilhelm Sahm : History of the plague in East Prussia . Leipzig 1905.
  • Manfred Vasold: The plague . Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 9783806217797 .
  • Carl Christian Wahrmann: Communication of the plague: seaside cities of the Baltic Sea region and the threat from the epidemic 1708–1713. Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3428138814 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Robert Albinus: Königsberg Lexicon . Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-88189-441-1
  2. ↑ Swiss colonists in East Prussia (1896)