In July 1184, the most powerful men in the Holy Roman Empire gathered in a church room to settle a political feud. King Heinrich VI presided over the meeting, surrounded by dozens of counts, burgraves, and lords. The event was intended to be a standard diplomatic assembly.
Instead, it ended in an unusual and fatal mass casualty. Within minutes, the floor completely gave way, plunging the elite nobility into a massive underground cesspit. Dozens of men died that morning, not by swords or arrows, but by drowning in human waste.
A Royal Gathering at Petersberg Citadel
King Heinrich VI called the meeting at the Petersberg Citadel in Erfurt. His goal was to mediate an ongoing dispute between Landgrave Louis III of Thuringia and Archbishop Conrad of Mainz. Nobles from across the empire traveled to attend the negotiations. They convened in a large room inside the provost’s building of the cathedral chapter. The room quickly became packed with attendees standing tightly together to witness the proceedings.
The Wooden Floor Collapses
The wooden floorboards and supporting timber beams were not designed to hold the combined weight of so many heavily dressed men. As the meeting commenced, the floor suddenly fractured. The heavy oak beams snapped under the stress. The entire assembly dropped to the first floor below, which immediately broke under the massive impact of falling bodies and debris. The men plummeted a total distance of roughly 20 feet (6.1 meters) into the dark cellar of the monastery.
Falling Into the Monastic Cesspit
The basement of the building housed the monastery’s latrine. This large pit had been accumulating human waste from the monks for years without being emptied. The nobles landed directly in the deep pool of liquid excrement. Heavy stones and broken wooden beams rained down on top of them.
Approximately sixty high-ranking nobles perished in the pit. The victims included Count Gozmar III of Ziegenhain, Count Frederick I of Abenberg, Burgrave Frederick I of Kirchberg, and Count Heinrich of Schwarzburg. The men died either from the blunt force trauma of the fall or from drowning and suffocating in the raw sewage.
The King’s Narrow Escape
King Heinrich VI and Archbishop Conrad avoided the fall entirely. At the moment of the collapse, both men were sitting inside a recessed window alcove constructed of solid stone. The stone floor of the niche held firm while the rest of the room crumbled.
They remained stranded on the narrow ledge until workers brought wooden ladders to rescue them. Landgrave Louis III also survived the drop by gripping an iron window rail until he was pulled to safety. Immediately following his rescue, King Heinrich VI left Erfurt and did not resume the diplomatic meeting.