The Black Death

The Black Death in Central Europe

The German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire — encompassing modern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and parts of the Czech Republic and Poland — were among the regions most profoundly affected by the Black Death. The pandemic arrived in 1349, spreading through the trade routes that connected the cities of the Rhineland, Bavaria, and Bohemia to the plague-stricken regions of Italy and France. The epidemic’s impact was compounded by the violent persecution of Jewish communities that accompanied its advance, producing some of the worst antisemitic violence in medieval European history.

The Rhineland: Commerce and Catastrophe

The Rhineland was the commercial heartland of the Holy Roman Empire. Its cities — Cologne, Strasbourg, Mainz, Trier, Basel — were connected by the Rhine, one of Europe’s major trade arteries, and by overland routes to the Low Countries, France, and Italy. This commercial density made the region exceptionally vulnerable to plague.

The disease entered the Rhineland in the spring of 1349, likely carried by merchants and travellers crossing the Alps from northern Italy or moving down the Rhine from the Low Countries. Basel was among the first cities to be struck, in January 1349. Strasbourg followed in the summer, and Cologne — the largest city in the German lands, with a population of perhaps 40,000 — was affected by the autumn.

The mortality in the Rhineland cities was severe, though precise figures are difficult to establish. The chronicler Fritsche Closener of Strasbourg estimated that 14,000 people died in his city. In Basel, contemporary sources report 6,000 deaths. Cologne’s losses are less well documented, but the city’s religious houses and parishes suffered heavy mortality, and the disruption of trade and administration was severe.

The Rhineland was also the epicentre of the persecution of Jewish communities during the Black Death. Accusations of well-poisoning, which had first emerged in the Dauphiné and Savoy in 1348, spread rapidly through the German-speaking lands. The results were catastrophic. In Strasbourg, the entire Jewish community — approximately 2,000 people — was burned alive on 14 February 1349, before the plague had even reached the city. In Mainz, the Jewish community, one of the largest in Europe, was destroyed in August 1349; many Jews chose to burn their own houses and die together rather than face the mob. In Cologne, the Jewish quarter was attacked and its inhabitants killed. Hundreds of smaller Jewish communities across the Rhineland, Swabia, and Franconia were annihilated.

Pope Clement VI issued two papal bulls condemning the persecution, declaring that the Jews were dying of plague alongside Christians and that the accusation of well-poisoning was a lie inspired by the devil. His intervention saved some communities, particularly in the papal territories around Avignon, but it could not prevent the massacres in the Rhineland, where local authorities were either unable or unwilling to protect their Jewish populations.

Bavaria and the Alpine Regions

Bavaria, which lay on the trade routes connecting Italy to the Danube valley, was struck by plague in 1349. Munich, Augsburg, Regensburg, and Nuremberg all suffered significant mortality. The Alpine passes — the Brenner, the Reschen, the Semmering — that channelled commerce between Italy and the German lands served as conduits for the disease.

The chronicler John of Winterthur, a Franciscan friar writing in the 1340s, described the plague’s impact on the southern German lands with vivid detail. He recorded the terror of the population, the failure of medical treatments, and the breakdown of social bonds as families abandoned their sick. His account is one of the most important primary sources for the plague in Central Europe.

The Alpine regions — Tyrol, Carinthia, Styria — were affected somewhat later than the lowland cities, and the mountainous terrain may have slowed transmission. However, the valleys and passes that channelled trade and travel were inevitably struck, and the isolated communities of the high Alps, once infected, often suffered disproportionately due to their small populations and limited resources.

Bohemia and the Eastern Lands

Bohemia, under the rule of Emperor Charles IV, was one of the most prosperous and stable regions of Central Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. Prague, the imperial capital, was a major centre of learning and commerce, and its university — founded in 1348 — attracted scholars from across Europe. The plague reached Bohemia in 1349–1350, though the mortality appears to have been somewhat lower than in the Rhineland.

The reasons for Bohemia’s relative immunity are debated. Some scholars suggest that the kingdom’s inland position and its less developed commercial connections to the plague-affected regions of Italy and France provided some protection. Others point to the effectiveness of quarantine measures imposed by local authorities. The evidence is uncertain, and it is possible that the lower recorded mortality reflects gaps in the sources rather than a genuine difference in the disease’s impact.

Poland, to the northeast, may have been less severely affected than the German lands, though the evidence is sparse. The Polish chronicler Jan Długosz, writing in the fifteenth century, described plague in Kraków and other Polish cities, but the timing and severity of the epidemic are difficult to establish. Some historians have argued that Poland’s lower population density and its less developed urban network limited the spread of the disease, though this view has been challenged by more recent research.

The Flagellant Movement

The Flagellant movement reached its greatest intensity in the German-speaking lands. Beginning in the spring of 1349, bands of Flagellants marched from town to town throughout the Rhineland, Thuringia, and Saxony, performing public acts of penance in the hope of averting divine wrath. The movement was led by charismatic preachers who claimed to have received divine revelations and who challenged the authority of the established Church.

The Flagellants’ public processions — in which participants stripped to the waist and whipped themselves with scourges studded with iron spikes — attracted large crowds and generated intense emotional excitement. However, the movement quickly became associated with the persecution of Jews, as Flagellant preachers accused Jewish communities of poisoning wells and called for their destruction. The Church condemned the movement in October 1349, and it was suppressed by the secular authorities, though it continued underground in some areas for decades.

Economic and Social Consequences

The economic impact of the Black Death on Central Europe was similar to that experienced elsewhere in Europe, though with regional variations. The labour shortages created by mass mortality drove up wages and disrupted the manorial economy. In the Rhineland, where serfdom had already been weakening before the plague, the epidemic accelerated the transition to wage labour and tenant farming. In the eastern lands — Brandenburg, Prussia, Silesia — where serfdom was more deeply entrenched, landlords responded to labour shortages by tightening restrictions on peasant movement, a process that would intensify in the fifteenth century.

The impact on guilds was significant. The craft guilds of the Rhineland cities lost large numbers of masters and apprentices, disrupting the transmission of skills and the organisation of production. In some cities, the shortage of skilled workers led to the relaxation of guild regulations, allowing women and non-guild members to practise trades that had previously been restricted.

The Habsburg Lands

The Habsburg territories — Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola — were affected by the plague in 1349. Vienna, which would later become one of the great capitals of Europe, was still a relatively modest city in the mid-fourteenth century, with a population of perhaps 20,000. The plague struck the city in the autumn of 1349, and the mortality was significant, though precise figures are lacking.

Duke Albert II of Austria, known as “Albert the Wise,” responded to the plague with a combination of religious measures and practical public health regulations. He ordered the cleaning of streets, the removal of waste, and the isolation of the sick — measures that anticipated the more systematic quarantine regulations that would be developed in the Italian states in the following decades.