Great Plague of Vienna
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The Great Plague of Vienna occurred in 1679 in
Vienna, located on the River Danube, 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
To commemorate the city's deliverance from the Great Plague and later waves of the disease, the Viennese erected monuments such as the famous
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 1665–1666, 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 a plague in 1667–1669, but there are no definite notices of it after 1672. France saw its last plague epidemic in 1668.[1]
In the years 1675–1684 a new plague wave originated in the
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,
Lieber Augustin
The great plague of 1679 gave rise to the legend of
Augustin is remembered in the popular folk song
See also
- History of Vienna
- Pestsäule (Vienna)
References
- ^ a b public domain: Payne, Joseph Frank (1911). "Plague". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 696. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Ackerknecht, Erwin H. "History and Geography of the Most Important Diseases." New York: Hafner Publishers, 1965.
- Gregg, Charles T. "Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century." Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985.
- AEIOU on the Lieber Augustin