Central Europe has seen devastating rains and floods during july 2021. Politicians in Germany labeled them as “never seen before“.

• https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/rheinland-pfalz/ot-dreyer-aus-landtag-katastrophe-noch-nie-dagewesen-100.html
• https://www.krone.at/2462785.

Interviews with concerned people, who lost their belongings, their houses or even relatives, often expressed the idea that floods like they happened in the Eifel and Ardennes mountains were not possible.

July 2021

Since mid-July, heavy rain has caused severe damage in various regions of Central Europe.  Houses, highways and railway lines, but also houses and huge fields of land were torn away.  Small rivulets swelled into mighty rivers.  As of July 21, 2021, there are more than 170 fatalities in Germany, around 200 in all European countries.  In contrast to the many floods on the large rivers Rhine, Danube or Elbe, it is now rather smaller rivers such as Kyll, Erft, Ahr or Zinn and Aich that have swelled up in a very short time due to regional heavy rain.  In Erftstadt there were huge ravines, in Berchtesgadener Land there were mudslides.  Houses and streets were washed away.

The meteorological low called Bernd brought enormous amounts of rain, up to 250 l / m² within 24 hours.  Normal in Germany is around 85 l / m² in July.  The low pressure area remained stable over Central Europe for about a week and shoveled warm and humid air over the Eastern Alps to Central Europe. It constantly brought showers and thunderstorms, which repeatedly caused extreme weather.

• https://www.dwd.de/DE/wetter/thema_des_tages/2021/7/15.html

 

July 1342

When looking at July 1342 we learn that there was already a somehow comparable situation. In 1342, as in 2021, there were ravines, mudslides and enormous floods, as it is proven by written and archaeological sources. For example, the chronicle of the bishops of Mainz dating to the 15th century and written in Eberbach monastery describes the situation as follows:

Also in the year 1342 there was at the feast of John the Baptist (June 24th) and for several weeks (…) a great flood not only of heavy rain, but also breaking out of the interior of mountains, valleys and lands all around and flowing out. Thus in most provinces, and especially around the rivers Rhine and Main,  but also elsrwhere, vegetables, fruits, grass, buildings, animals and people were devastated in various pitiful ways. Cologne, Mayence and Frankfurt were largely under water, so that a man in the Mayence Cathedral was almost up to his belt, the large tower over the bridge at Frankfurt near the house of the Teutonic order, along with a part of the bridge was tumbled and completely swept away. There were also many horrors and losses in different parts of the world.

(Item anno domini MCCCXLII circa festum Johannis Baptiste et deinceps per plures ebdomodas temporibus reverendissimi patris et domini domini supradicti archiepiscopi factum est diluvium magnum nun solum ex pluvia nimia, sed ex occultis montium, vallium et terre universalis meatibus erumpens et emanans, supereffluenter et adeo per plurimas provincias et maxime circa Renum et Mogonum fluvios ac alibi omniquaque in frugibus, fructibus, feno, edificiis, pecoribus et heu pluribus hominibus multiformiter et miserabiliter devastavit. Insuper maxima pars civitatum precipue Colonia, Maguncia, Franckfurt [in medio fuerant aquarum,ita quod in maiori ecclesia Maguntina stetit fere usque ad cingulum hominis et turrim magnam super ponte Franckfurt] apud domum Theutoricorum cum parte pontis diruit penitus et evertit, preterea plurima horribilia et dampnosa evenerunt in variis mundi provinciis..)

(Cronica de episcopis Moguntii. in: Ernst Zais: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Erzstifts Mainz. (Wiesbaden 1880), 12. –  https://archive.org/details/zais_beitraege_erzstift_mainz/page/12/mode/2up

 

The city of Frankfurt was almost completely under water, the residents fled to a neighboring hill, where – according to a late chronicle (Leisner 1706, 532) – emergency accommodation made of wood and straw was built. In Sachsenhausen near Frankfurt  “due to the great violence at the Stein-Werck in Sachsenhausen, a hole opened up next to grassland of the Teutonic Order, around hundred shoes in length, fifty in width and 20 in depth, there was a lot of stone and wood in it” (Leisner 1706, 533).

The database tambora https://www.tambora.org provides a collection of historical reports on past weather events, records including some entries for July 21, 1342. Information on historical source criticism and detailed citation of the sources is somewhat sparse in this database initiated by natural scientists. The majority of the information on 1342 comes from relatively late chronicles, often not until the 17th century, for which it remains unclear how reliable their information is in detail. In general, the chronicles contain entries such as

“On July 21st, 1342 heavy showers occurred and the approaching waters caused huge damage especially in the big cities Frankfurt, Würzburg, Nuremberg, Bamberg,  Erfurt, Regensburg  etc. and destroyed even the most impressive bridges there.”

A.C. 1342 den 21. Julij fielen grosse Wolckenbrüche / und thaten die anlaufffende Wasser / sonderlich in den großen Städten / zu Frankfurt/ Würzburg/ Nürnberg/ Bamberg/ Erffurt/ Regenspurg/etc. gewaltigen Schaden / riessen daselbst die stattlichsten Brücken ein /”

(Aldenberger 1615 via https://www.tambora.org/index.php/grouping/event/show?event_id=22970).

 

These examples show how sparse the information in general remains. We have little information on the extent of the damages and the number of victims remains unclear. Estimates of at least 6,000 deaths provide in the best case a rough idea. However, chronical texts focus on the major rivers and cities. A geographical analysis, where the thunderstorms happened is not without problems. The high water levels on the rivers often reflect the water runoff, but not the regions of the storm. These are hardly known in the written sources – but geo- and landscape archaeology reveals traces of storms from the 14th century.

Flash floods in low mountain ranges 

(Geo-) archaeological research in low mozntain ranges like Sölling, Spessart, Schönbuch near Tübingen or in Upper Franconia near Kronach and Bamberg show how enormous masses of water have torn deep ravines in settlements and farmland. (Geo-) archaeological research in low mountain ranges like Sölling, Spessart, Schönbuch near Tübingen or in Upper Franconia near Kronach and Bamberg show traces of  enormous masses of water that have torn deep ravines in settlements and farmland.

The deserted village of Winnefeld is located in Südsölling, one of the large forest areas in Lower Saxony. To this day, the church ruins mark the location of the former village, not far from the medieval town of Nienover and the Corvey monastery. The settlement extended along the upper course of Reiherbach creek over a length of more than 1.5 km. After an earlier use of the area in the Carolingian era, the village seems to have been re-established with the development of the country in the region. The late Romanesque village church was built in the second half of the 12th century. To the east of the church there is a dent in the terrain, in which, as well as in the narrow flood plain of the Reiherbach to the south, evidence of a severe runoff event in the 14th century was found in geoarchaeological studies. In a period of a few hours to a few days, box-shaped gorges tore here, whereby at the end of the event a huge body of rubble and gravel was deposited, in which thousands of ceramic fragments, brick fragments and metal parts were discovered. The dent east of the church probably marks the course of a former road, “which was torn by the runoff of the heavy rain along its entire length over a width of 15m and a depth of 2.5-2.8m. The runoff widened the floodplain of the Reiherbach considerably, several buildings with inventory were torn away. ” Archaeologically, the ceramic finds can be used to date the event to the period from 1320 to before 1400 AD. Soon afterwards the settlement was abandoned (Bork et al. 2011; Beyer 2008; Stephan 2007).

The deserted village of Winnefeld is located in southern Sölling, one of the large forest areas in Lower Saxony. To this day, the church ruins mark the location of the former village, not far from the medieval town of Nienover and Corvey monastery. The settlement extended along the upper Reiherbach creek over a length of more than 1.5 km. After a period of early medieval land use the village was probably re-established during the regional colonisation period in the 11th/12th c. The late Romanesque village church was built in the second half of the 12th century. In a topographical dent east of the church as well as in the narrow flood plain of the Reiherbach to the south, there is geoarchaeological evidence of a severe runoff event in the 14th century. In a period of a few hours to a few days, box-shaped gorges were washed out and were refilled at the end of the event with huge sediments of rubble and gravel including thousands of ceramic fragments, brick fragments and metal parts. The dent east of the church probably marks the course of a former road, “which was torn by the runoff of the heavy rain along its entire length over a width of 15m and a depth of 2.5-2.8m. The runoff widened the floodplain of the Reiherbach considerably, several buildings with inventory were torn away” (Bork et al. 2011, 232). Archaeologically, the ceramic finds can be used to date the event to the period from 1320 to before 1400 AD. Soon afterwards the settlement was abandoned (Bork et al. 2011; Beyer 2008; Stephan 2007).

The Kirschgraben is located in the southern Spessart near Höllhammer, which belongs to the municipality of Heimbuchenthal. From the west, the Kirschgraben flows into the narrow Elsava valley, which is further narrowed here by an alluvial fan. In 2008 the alluvial fan was examined with a larger excavator. The central sediment layer was an almost 2 m thick deposit which, in addition to sand, contained coarse material consisting of angular, elongated sandstones. The stones were torn up in the gorge, they were up to 140 cm in size and weighed up to 650 kg. A huge flood must have run down through the Kirschgraben here. Ceramic finds here also date back to the 14th century (Bork et al. 2011).

In 2013, on the occasion of heavy rain in the Tübingen and Reutlingen area, an erosion channel in the Schönbuch was the subject of a blog post in Archaeologik blog (Schreg 28,2.2013). Studies by the University of Stuttgart were able to use radiocarbon samples to date the gullying to the middle of the 14th century (Beckenbach et al. 2013).

An erosion gully west of Friesen near Kronach in Upper Franconia, close to a medieval deserted settlement was examined in detail. First erosion events can be dated to the Roman Iron Age. Another phase of erosion belongs to the early Middle Ages, but intensive soil erosion occurred in the 14th century. “In the first half of the 14th century two intense heavy rain events caused the complete erosion of the soil and exposed the underlying weathering bedrock. After the abandonment of the settlement in the middle of the 14th century, soil formation took place under a forest” (Dotterweich 2003, 28).

North of Bamberg near Kemmern is the narrow gorge of Wolfsgraben. Written sources indicate “that the catchment area of ​​the Wolfsgraben was used for viticulture at the latest from the High Middle Ages. Extreme heavy rain events in the first half of the 14th century led to intensive runoff in the Wolfsgraben, eroding older (high medieval) colluvia and ripping a gully system up to five meters deep and 400 to 500 meters long  along the valley floor. During or shortly after this event, coarse-sand colluvia were deposited along the basis of the gully. In the area of ​​slope undercuts landslides occurred” (Dotterweich 2003, 35; cf. Schmitt 2003). Before the late Middle Ages, there was a relatively gentle notch here, which may be very old, as it is indicated by washouts on rocks at the top of today’s gorge. Today it is a deep, but also partially filled gorge that looks romantic and adventurous at first glance, but is actually a testimony to a devastating heavy rain event.

There are other examples further north, for example in the Wolfsschlucht near Pritzenhagen/ Oberbarnim, Brandenburg (Bork 2006). In the foothills of the Alps, there are currently no relevant findings – possibly only due to insufficient research.

Floods in the Eifel mountains

In the volcanic maar lakes of the Eifel, soil scientists from Mainz university have examined extensive drill cores from the lake deposits (Sirocko et al. 2009). In these lakes with rather small catchment areas sediments were deposited seasonally. They formed even thin layers, which often allow an annual resolution. In several core samples in the Ulmener Maar, in the Holzmaar, and in the Schalkenmehrener Maar the regular sedimentation is interrupted in the mid 14th century by a layer, which is many times thicker than the others. This indicates a massive heavy rain event, washing soil from the surrounding slopes in the lake. In some cases, even larger stones were also washed into the middle of the maar.

The dating to 1342 of these sediments is somewhat positivistic, as it assumes that the 1342 event was so severe that no other point in time can be considered for such stratification. This interpretation has a lot of probability in itself, as numerous radiocarbon dates and the annual sedimentation allow the chronology  to be narrowed down. In specific cases it is difficult to clearly relate such findings to the Magdalen flood in July 1342. The situation at Friesen with two flood events suggests that we are dealing with a phase of several rains and floods. This is also shown by the written sources that mention such summer floods during the 14th c. several times, even if none of them reached nearly similar water levels. At a specific location it is therefore possible that we trace another rain event, with high precipitation at one spot, but less devastating in a more regional perspective. Because Friesen, Wolfsgraben near Bamberg and Kirschgraben in the Spessart mountain are all situated in one big region, they may represent one single heavy rain weather, probably the one registered in written documents for 1342, but this is not for sure.

However geoarchaeological research showed that such gullying is closely connected with phases of intensive land use that increases water runoffs (Dotterweich 2003; Bork 2006). Especially the clearance of forests and an intensification of agricultural practice result in a higher risk of soil erosion. High medieval colonisation, village formation and the Introduction of the open field system were important factors and preconditions for the disastrous Magdalen flood.

The ecological background of 1342 thunderstorms

As already said, there are similarities and differences between July 2021 and July 1342. To what extent is it now possible to draw further conclusions from this? – for dealing with the flood risk today on the one hand and for understanding the situation in 1342 on the other?

Historical comparison does not mean to equate processes or to hierarchize them. Comparisons are rather used heuristically (i.e. with the aim of finding a coherent path of research and adequate hypotheses, which can be tested) to analyze possible relationships. Therefore we cannot fill the gaps in our knowledge related to the 1342 event with information from 2021 or, the other way round, use 1342 data to make prognoses for the 21st century. Also, conclusions by analogy are only possible where sufficient similarities have been established to actually infer similar relationships of cause and effect , especially from situations which are distant in time. However, we may use comparisons as a start to build hypotheses for further research. But this is not yet reliable knowledge.

2021 and 1342 are similar in terms of phenomena, possibly also in terms of the role of human land use. However, the role of climate change is different, because the 14th c. marks the beginning of the Little Ice Age, while we are currently in an unprecedented phase of accelerated warming. Nevertheless: The 14th and 21st centuries are phases in which climate systems change and lead to various environmental crises: In addition to droughts and floods, there are also pandemics such as the plague or the Covid19 pandemic (which is comparatively well controlled thanks to a modern  scientific understanding).

The comparison between 2021 and 1342, however, raises a number of questions that – at least in part – may be clarified with archaeological research. Current debate on climate change refers more and more to the role of land cover: the capacity of trees for carbon dioxide storage, their role for cooling by water evaporation, their ability for lowering the water runoff and preventing soil erosion.  Furthermore, we start to recognize the importance of hedges in our landscapes, not only as a biotope for birds and insects, but also as a regulator for the micro climate, groundwater recharge and soil erosion.

Research questions

It is an important field of research to see what role these factors played in the 14th century, when for the last time floods happened similar to 2021. The crisis-ridden 14th century was preceded by a phase of growth and a certain prosperity, which saw an intensification of land use, which went hand in hand with a consolidation of rural villages and urbanisation. Probably these land use changes were crucial for the intensity of the floods, but also for the pandemics for livestock and humans during the 14th century including the Black Death.

We know from written and geographical evidence about the open field system, which characterises medieval agriculture in central Europe at least since the 12th/13th century. Peasants farmed the arable land in a coordinated way. Huge complexes of fields were cultivated in one year with the same crop and were also manured by herds of sheep or cattle commonly brought on the fallow land. The underlying principle of crop rotation was well known centuries before. What was new was the coordinated cultivation that allowed the peasants to abandon separating fences and hedges. The clearance of hedges is of high importance because they may have had ecological consequences. Due to little research efforts we still miss relevant data, which allow to verify these land use changes in sufficient details (cf. Schreg 2019).

However, without further research on the ecological evolution of medieval cultural landscapes we can only refer many to contemporary analogies. Therefore a comparison 1342-2021 carries the risk of a circular conclusion. It is therefore important to take a critical look at the historical sources.

So far, research focussed on the literary, chronical sources, while the documentary and archival sources, as for example court proceedings, contracts, or charters, have hardly been taken into account. An example for this kind of written evidence can be found among charters related to the town of Esslingen (Schreg 19.1.2013). In September 1342 the Augustinian monastery in Esslingen and the abbot of Kaisheim monastery, that owned some vineyards just above the Augustinians, were in a quarrel about the consequences of a landslide. This is the first evidence that 1342 rains also affected the Neckar valley.

Recently, Martin Bauch (2019) addressed the Magdalene Flood more systematically. He addressed three research tasks:

1. Obtaining new details about the Magdalene Floods itself and on their socio-economic impact, especially with regard to supply crises and regulatory adaptation, based on the so far hardly used, non-narrative tradition
2. The interconnection of historical sources with scientific data, wherever these can be supplemented or corrected; and not least with the aim of determining other natural extreme events that were previously overshadowed by the July flood of 1342.
3. To discuss the relevance of extreme events for premodern infrastructure history and to use the  Magdalene flood, as an exemplary case study, to test whether the first medieval approaches for public precaution services were related to this extraordinary flood experience “(Bauch 2019, [5]).

A look at the non-literary tradition allows a much more differentiated picture of the flood events of July 1342. “The year 1342 was by no means exclusively characterized by floods or continuous precipitation – rather the extremes changed from the snowy and cold winter of 1341/42 to the early melting weather in February including snow melt and ice rushes, afterwards followed a long drought triggering urban fires, than extreme precipitation in July, which – as could be shown at least for the Lower Rhine – triggered long-lasting floods. In the following, the term Magdalene Flood will therefore be used in the awareness that we are actually dealing with several flood events in 1342/43, which must also be supplemented by a pronounced phase of drought in spring / early summer 1342 “(Bauch 2019, [12]).

Assessing damages and victims of the Magdalene flood is difficult. There is some occasional information on the repairs of bridges and even hydraulic engineering projects. Bavarian historian Aventinus, for example, describes that 1345

“In lower Bavaria at Oberalteich the river Danube wanted to come closer to the monastery, biting away fields and grassland.  Probably ten following years a ditch was dug out. By the emperor’s effort neighbours had to help, paying more than 1000 pounds of Regensburg system. The Danube was thrown to the new ditch.” (Aventin 1886, 493).

In the years after 1342, numerous bridge construction activities can be documented, but often it remains unclear to what extent a destruction in 1342 was connected with them.

Weather postcast for July 1342

At first glance, the map of historical data related to 1342 shows a storm front that occurred between July 19th and July 25th moving from southeast to northwest across Germany. This led to the assumption of a so-called Vb weather situation, in which a water-saturated low pressure area above the Mediterranean passes east of the Alps to the north. The clouds do not rain out on the Alps, but bring masses of water to Central Europe. This is also the case with the Bernd low pressure area 2021, which led to first floods in northeastern Italy at the beginning of July. Contrary to what can be assumed for 1342, Bernd did not move slowly from southwest to northeast, but moved back and forth across Germany on a small scale. Here it came on July 10th to heavy rain in Lower Franconia, then on July 15th in the Eifel and on July 17th again further south on the edge of the Alps. In 2021 it was a so-called Central European trough position, which means that the low does not move, but rather remains over Central Europe for a longer period of time, bringing in cold air on the one hand and warm, moist air on the other. Such a weather situation is also conceivable for 1342, but the source situation is too thin (Herget et al. 2015). Doubts about the Vb weather situation in 1342 were expressed in particular because there is no evidence of heavy rain from the pre-Alpine region (Böhm 2011, 153).

Learning from 1342 

For this purpose we need to check for interconnections between the 14th c. crisis, settlement and land use change. Very probably agricultural intensification caused a removal of hedges which affected microclimate, water runoff, soil erosion and probably also the biotops of rodents. Human food supply became short and the health situation of people worsened. Geo- and bioarchaeological data as well as archaeogenetics and ecology will be important disciplines, but it is the task and expertise of archaeologists to identify the relevant sites and to provide well dated and contexted samples for further analysis. Archaeology has in theory many possibilities for contributing to a better understanding for 1342, by reconstructing the impact of mid 14th c. rains, by looking at ecological change regarding land use, rodents’ ecology, health conditions, biodiversity and soil erosion intensities. Especially regarding the 14th century more data on the field systems are needed to understand how changes of settlement and landscapes may be related to ecological consequences, which may have favoured the outbreak of the plague. Especially the effects of agriculture on hydrology, soils and biodiversity are maybe of high importance, as they also affected the rodents’ populations, which were a vector of the pandemy of the Black Death.

At the moment, however, the available sources are insufficient to prove that the flood in 1342 was caused by changes in land use – or to challenge this plausible hypothesis. There is some plausibility that population growth and urbanization led to the need for an increased agrarian production. Colonisation opened new land, but in the already densely settled regions the introduction of the open field system with a regulated crop rotation in three large field blocks made it possible to remove hedges and to turn the plough on the neighbouring fields. Crop rotation was practiced before, the new aspect is the coordination among the peasants.  Synchronised times of fallow, ploughing and yield made it possible to reduce unploughed strips and to gain more arable land within the cultural landscape. This has been considered a great innovation in medieval agriculture. In the mid-term there was an increase in yields, but in the long term there were several risks, which basically contributed to the 14th c. crisis.

The open field system must have resulted in an extensive restructuring of the landscape. Probably individual plots were redistributed and enclosures by hedges, fences and field walls were reorganised. A crop rotation practiced on individual plots made it necessary to enclose the fields at least during the fallow period, to prevent the husbandry grazing the crop on the surrounding fields. In an open field system these troubling field borders were removed in order to plough the entire land and to turn the plough on the neighbouring field. As the rhythm of cultivation was the same there, no crop damage was done. The husbandry was held together in communal herds and left their manure during the fallow periods on the entire field block. However the removal of hedges had ecological consequences. The loss of hedges caused a decline in groundwater levels and altered the microclimate. Large areas cultivated with the same crop had a higher heath emission and evaporation than small field blocks.  I’m not sure whether this had consequences for weather conditions as for example the risk for thunderstorms, but for sure the risk of soil erosion increased. By now we don’t have enough information on the early medieval field systems in central Europe. In the north we know the ‘celtic fields’, rather compact  fields enclosed by stone lynchets. Similar fields surrounded by hedges may have a lower visibility especially in the early settled landscapes, often characterized by loess or deep soils.  More research is needed to better understand these changes in the cultural landscape and to model its ecological impact  (cf. Schreg 2020; Schreg 2021). Archaeological excavations – especially numerous rescue excavations – need to take notice of the necessary geo- and bioarchaeological data (cf. Schreg 2021; Kottmann et al. 2021).

 

perished memories

Commemoration and literary tradition related the 1342 floods with St. Magdalens day (July 22th), which was the day, when in Frankfurt a supplicatory procession  was held (Bauch 2021). Historical reports focus on towns and rivers, but we have little information, how people were hit by the flood. Whereas there are currently many interviews with victims of the flood in the Ahrtal and media reports about single fates. We have nearly no information for  these personal aftermath in 1342. Information as on the emergency accomodations close to Frankfurt are rare. Geoarchaeological evidence shows the large power of the water also in smaller valleys – what is not present in the written record.  Modern floods are also commemorated most often by pictures of flooded landscapes and streets. Currently videos made with omni-present mobile phones alter the visual perception, because now the event itself can be documented. When people are surprised by floods even on small creeks in low mountain ranges, this is a consequence of the medial perception and a lacking awareness of past events.

Despite important differences the 14th c. may give orientation for current handling of environmental risks, The 14th c. implies that even in pre-industrial time, people were able to cause environmental problems with horrific consequences. Though, more important it may contribute to a higher sensitivity for environmental risks even in Central Europe. Closer research on possible interconnections may help to overcome trivialization of climate change.

In contrast to Covid19, where many historical analogies were common in the public media (comp.  https://archaeologik.blogspot.com/2020/05/die-historische-dimension-unserer.html), there are only very few reports on historical floods now.

• Martin Bauch/ Hans-Rudolf Bork/ Adam Izdebski, Vergessenes Extremwetter: Uns fehlt eine Erinnerungskultur für Naturkatastrophen. FAZ (20.7.2021). – https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/klimakrise-plaedoyer-fuer-umweltgeschichtliche-warnhinweise-17444790.html

This oblivion of past flood events is well demonstrated by an exhibition and the environment office of the Mainz city council in 2012, which made historical floods to its topic – but did not look back more than approximately the last century. The impressive description of the water in the Mainz cathedral in 1342 was just forgotten.

 

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A first version of this blogpost was published in German at Archaeologik:

• R. Schreg, Noch nie dagewesen? Hochwasser und Starkregen im Juli 2021 und im Juli 1342. Archaeologik (20.7.2021). – https://archaeologik.blogspot.com/2021/07/noch-nie-dagewesen-hochwasser-und.html

Some changes and additions have been made, for example thanks to the comment by Klaus Graf at https://archivalia.hypotheses.org/133588