City fire in Suhl on May 1st, 1753
The city fire on May 1, 1753 caused considerable damage in Suhl in the county of Henneberg in the Electorate of Saxony , from which the city only recovered after a few years.
history
On April 25, 1753, an unknown woman came to the Suhl archdeacon Dr. Ten, who originally wanted to go to the local evangelical superintendent Müller. But because Müller had not traveled to home but to Frauenwald in the Thuringian Forest , the stranger was sent to Dr. Tens referenced. She prophesied that the city of Suhl would fare like the burned down city of Ilmenau . Then she left his house and a few days later a big fire broke out in Suhl. He destroyed 1432 houses. After the fire, there were around 5,000 homeless people in Suhl.
The town fire probably broke out under the shingle roof of the gunsmith Hans Eckardt. After that, the neighboring Schlegelmilchische Haus was attacked by the flames, and only then did the surrounding houses. There were different suspicions about the cause of the fire, but all police investigations were unsuccessful. For example, immediately before the fire broke out, according to various people from Suhl, four farmers from Ahlstädt would have been in the attic of Eckardt's house to trade in hay. The chimney of the neighboring Schlegelmilch house, which faced the shingle roof, may have been to blame for the outbreak of the fire. This assumption was rejected again, however, because it could not be proven that the local wine merchant had cooked varnish , baked cakes or washed laundry in his wash house.
The actual owner of the house, Hans Eckardt, was also suspected of having left the fire burning unattended in his house. He was only exonerated by a report from a member of the Suhl fire brigade in July 1753. As an eyewitness, the fireman reported that when he came to Eckart's house with the top of the fire, the roof was already gone, but there was no fire downstairs in the house. Behind it, however, the whole Schlegelmilchische Haus would have been on fire and therefore it was assumed that the fire started there too. The fire would have raged and blown in Schlegelmilch's house as if ten bellows had been behind it. Because of the heat, the fireman had to give way. When he tried to pull down the top of the fire, it caught fire and could no longer be saved. Another firefighter said at the time that the fire actually started in Schlegelmilch's house. Only the roof of Eckart's house would have burned. Other houses had already burned down, and only then did Eckard burn down on the ground floor. The owner of the Schlegelmilchisches Haus defended himself against these allegations and presented his own witnesses.
In October 1753 the investigations into the city fire were stopped. Both neighboring house owners Schlegelmilch and Eckard received state perks to rebuild their houses, from which they were excluded until that point in time.
On the other hand, a search was made for the above-mentioned unknown woman who had prophesied the city fire and she was found on May 4, 1753 in Schleusingen . She voluntarily placed herself under arrest. After interrogations and intensive investigations, the mayor and council of the city of Suhl came to the judgment on June 21, 1753 that there was not the slightest suspicion against this woman for the fire in Suhl. The woman is sick. Therefore, in October 1753, she was transferred to the kennel and poor house in Waldheim .
In addition to the churches, the destroyed public buildings also included the office building , which was one of the few buildings that was not rebuilt immediately, but only from 1810.
literature
- Ferdinand Werther: Seven books from the chronicle of the city of Suhl in the princes of Henneberg , 1846
Individual evidence
- ↑ Investigation of where the great fire that started on May 1, 1753 in the city of Suhl, whereby the largest and best part of it was cremated, originated in the German Digital Library
- ^ Reconstruction of the office building in Suhl , which was destroyed by the great fire in 1753, in the German Digital Library