Valentine's Day Pogrom 1349: "If the nobility had not owed them anything, they would not have been burned"

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It was truly disturbing news that reached the leadership of the city of Strasbourg during the year 1348: After that, an unknown disease attacked entire regions and swept their inhabitants away in a very short time.

At the same time, uprisings destroyed the traditional order.

And massacres, research had shown that the apocalyptic plague was by no means sent from heaven, but rather spread by human hands.

And the Jews have been identified as the author.

The Strasbourg chronicler Jakob Twinger von Königshofen put what followed in dry words: "the greatest dying that has ever been".

What happened on Valentine's Day 1349, February 14th, in the metropolis of Alsace, is an anti-Judaic lesson.

The Jews were rounded up, some of them tortured, and finally put to death by fire in a specially built hut.

2000 it should have been after Twinger.

The Black Death hadn't even reached the city yet.

But a political conflict in the bourgeoisie, social upheavals and very clear economic interests, especially of the nobility, ensured that the Jewish community was once again targeted by its Christian neighbors.

Strasbourg in the late Middle Ages, already with a completed cathedral tower

Source: Wikipedia / Public Domain

As in many cities of the Middle Ages that had become wealthy through trade, bustling merchants succeeded in occupying the decisive positions in the commune in Strasbourg.

The bishop was largely disempowered, the nobles only had eight seats in the council, while the merchants had 14 and the guild craftsmen even 25 seats.

The executive, appointed for life, represented by Stettmeister (mayor) and Ammeister (council spokesman), however, were able to secure patricians.

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This gave them a task that until the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty lay with the King and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire: protecting the Jews.

For this they had to pay considerable dues as "imperial servants";

Frederick II, for example, was able to collect 200 silver marks from the Strasbourg community alone around 1241, which corresponded to about one hundredweight.

But in the troubled times of the following interregnum, many of these letters of protection, which also represented lucrative benefices, were passed on to the cities.

Charles IV, who saw himself challenged by an opposing king, confirmed this, so that Strasbourg could collect 500 silver marks from the Jews, eight times what the king was still entitled to.

Such sums say something about the economic efficiency of the Jews, who were largely denied trade and craft.

Instead, they were pushed into the role of bankers, as Christians were prohibited from lending money for interest.

The Bochum historian Dirk Jäckel shows the sums involved: According to this, the Strasbourg city council allowed an interest of two pfennigs per pound borrowed per week, which was well within limits and corresponds to an annual interest rate of around 43 percent.

Jews were frequently victims of pogroms in medieval cities - painting by Vicente Cutanda y Toraya (1850–1925)

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images /

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The authorities profited from it by skimming off the profits.

The masters were therefore alarmed when several letters reported not only about the spread of the plague, but also about statements that had been forced from Jews under torture.

These confirmed a suspicion that had surfaced earlier in connection with pogroms: The epidemic is looking for its way out of wells that have been poisoned by outsiders, be they Muslims or Jews: “Know that all Jews in every country know about the poison “Was an extorted confession from Solothurn.

A letter from the City Council of Cologne made it clear what dangerous consequences this could have.

It warned of a possible uprising against the authorities if they stood protectively in front of the Jewish communities.

Strasbourg acted quickly.

Some Jews were arrested, brutally interrogated and finally whacked without the accusation of well poisoning being substantiated.

But this attempt to calm the people's soul turned out to be ineffective.

In the meantime, the bishop and the nobility in Benfeld, south of Strasbourg, had agreed on how to proceed.

In order to break the rule of the merchants, alliance with the guilds should be sought and "no more Jews should be kept".

The chronicler Twinger testifies that it was also about paying off enormous debts: "If they had been poor and the aristocratic landowners had not owed them anything, they would not have been burned."

"On Friday the Jews were captured, on Saturday they were burned": "The Strasbourg Jewish persecution of 1349" by Eugene Beyer (1857)

Source: picture alliance / akg-images

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But as it was, the uprising broke out on February 9, 1349.

Under the guidance of a butcher, angry guild craftsmen marched in front of the master's offices.

They capitulated to overwhelming odds, resigned their offices and sought to escape while their fortunes were confiscated.

Then the guilds appointed a new council, which now again included larger numbers of nobles.

The pogrom began a day later.

“The Jews were captured on Friday, and they were burned on Saturday,” reported the chronicler Fritsche Closener, citing the number of 2000 victims, that is about a tenth of the population.

Only a few people willing to be baptized were spared, some beautiful Jewish women - incidentally against their will - and children who were torn from their parents and baptized, writes Dirk Jäckel.

The promissory notes were burned (which mainly rehabilitated the nobility) and the movable belongings of the murdered were distributed to the craftsmen, which once again makes a joint plot plausible.

If Closener came to the conclusion that “money was also the poison that killed the Jews”, it makes it clear that even clairvoyant contemporaries recognized why a defenseless minority was thrown into the fire.

Because the plague did not reach Strasbourg until a few months later.

Because there were no more Jews living there who could have poisoned the wells, another defamation argument was quickly found.

The Jews, it was said, had passed on their knowledge of the right poison to hired Christians, be they strangers, heretics, lepers, i.e. people who did not fit into Christian society at first sight.

"The Strasbourg case study shows in a particularly drastic way how fear of plague and hatred of Jews were instrumentalized for political and economic interests," writes Jäckel.

After Charles IV had triumphed over his rival, he made his peace with it by sanctioning the pogrom against his wards and granting the perpetrators impunity.

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