Everything about The Great Plague Of Vienna totally explained
The
Great Plague of Vienna occurred in
1679 in
Vienna,
Austria, the imperial residence of the Austrian
Habsburg rulers. From contemporary descriptions, the disease is believed to have been
bubonic plague, which is caused by the
bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by fleas associated with the
black rat and other rodents. The city was crippled by the epidemic, which recurred fitfully into the early 1680s, losing an estimated 76,000 residents.
Vienna, located on the
Danube River, was a major trading crossroads between east and west. As a result of this traffic, the city had suffered from episodic plague outbreaks since the first wave of "
Black Death" in the fourteenth century. The city was crowded and densely built. Descriptions indicate that there were no public
sewers or drainage systems, with stinking mounds of domestic garbage littering the streets. In addition, warehouses for trade goods, which held items such as clothing, carpets, and grain for months at a time, were heavily infested with rats. Conditions in the city were considered so unhealthy and filthy, even for the time, that the plague often carried the title "Viennese death" in other parts of Europe.
A religious order operating in Vienna, the Brotherhood of the
Holy Trinity, created special
hospitals for both children and adults during the 1679 epidemic. The basic
nursing care offered in the hospitals was simple, but was generally a vast improvement over other medical and public health measures in the city. Doctors treated patients by using
emetics,
bloodletting, and by applying noxious ointments. The corpses of plague victims were carted to the outer edges of the city and placed in large open pits for burning. However, the pits were exposed to the open air for several days until they were nearly full, allowing ongoing infection of the rat population.
To commemorate the city's deliverance from the Great Plague and later waves of the disease, the Viennese erected monuments such as the famous
Baroque Karlskirche with the associated 69 foot
plague columns known as the Pestsäule.
Regional outbreak
What has become known as the "Great Plague of Vienna", was actually only a subset of a much larger outbreak across Germany, Austria,
Bohemia and neighboring regions. This
epidemic appears to have been carried into the region from two opposing directions. It had been raging in
Western Europe for many years, traveling
East by
trade routes. The
Great Plague of London of
1664-
1665, which is believed to have originated from
the Netherlands in the
1650s, killed around 100,000 people, and was the first major epidemic in a series of outbreaks. In
1666 a severe plague raged in
Cologne and on the
Rhine, which was prolonged until
1670 in the district. In the Netherlands there was plague in
1667-
1669, but there are no definite notices of it after
1672. France saw its last plague epidemic in
1668.
In the years
1675-
1684 a new plague wave originated in the
Ottoman Empire (
Turkey and areas of the
Balkans). It moved into
North Africa,
Bohemia,
Poland,
Hungary,
Austria and
Saxony, progressing generally northward. The island of
Malta lost 11,000 persons in
1675.
The plague of Vienna in 1679 was very severe, causing at least 76,000 deaths. Other urban centers in this area of Europe had similar levels of casualties. For instance,
Prague in
1681 lost 83,000 due to plague.
Dresden was affected in
1680,
Magdeburg and
Halle in
1682. In Halle, a mortality of 4,397 out of a population of about 10,000 was recorded. Many North German cities suffered during these years; but, by
1683, the plague disappeared from Germany until the epidemic of
1707.
Lieber Augustin
The great plague of
1679 gave rise to the legend of
Lieber Augustin ("Dear Augustin"). Augustin was a popular
street musician, who, according to the legend, fell into a pit with bodies of plague victims, late at night when he was drunk. Augustin didn't contract the disease, which may have been owed to the influence of the alcohol.
Augustin is remembered in the popular folk song
Oh du lieber Augustin.
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