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“Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio, and Grim and Mild from Aaron”
Manky, listener discretion advised. Heinrich VI, the 18-year-old King of Germany, and son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Ibarbosa, sat by a window, next to Conrad of Vittelsbach, the Archbishop of Mines. It was the evening of July 25th, 1184, and the air between the two men was tense. By this point Heinrich and the Archbishop had run out of things to say to one another.
Earlier when they had first sat down, the conversation had flowed freely.
Heinrich had come to Airfort to broker an agreement between the Archbishop and the land grave Ludwig III of Thurinja. The two of them had some heated disputes over land rights in Airfort, but by all accounts, which had come to the negotiations willingly and with high hopes for a quick resolution. Heinrich, the King of Germany, had assembled a hooftag, an unofficial meeting attended
by his court, as well as the local nobility and clergy, to settle the matter once and for all. But by this point, however, Heinrich and the Archbishop were not talking about land, titles, or anything at all. The meeting had long since crumbled, so too, quite literally, had the building around them,
save for the window alcove where the two men had been sitting. Now Heinrich and the Archbishop awaited rescue in horrified silence, holding on for dear life after being forced to watch, as their fellow nobles floundered and drowned below them in a roiling pit of mud debris and human waste. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is Noble Blood.
The Airfort latrine disaster, as it would come to be called, is remembered as one of medieval history's most disgusting calamities. It was what it sounds like, a building collapsed into its underground latrine cesspit, killing injuring or traumatizing the attendees of Heinrich VI hooftag. It's effects, both on the lines of noble succession and on local folklore, would ripple
out for generations.
In order to understand how this tragic and nauseating accident occurred, we must first understand
one of the most significant architectural challenges facing any medieval city that of dealing with human waste. Many people believe that the middle ages were a sort of free-for-all of waste disposal. While it was, certainly true, that many medieval people had to dispose of their waste by, say, pouring it out of their windows or into the streets, in many places that was actually
Illegal and could carry heavy fines.
As a matter of fact, medieval people and in particular medieval municipal authorities devoted
“a great deal of attention to waste management.”
People in the middle ages dealt with their waste in a number of different ways. The way you might be most familiar with is the chamber pot or other kinds of portable toilets, but those, of course, would have left you with the problem of then disposing of the waste from the chamber pots. Luckily, at least in some places, there was another option, a latrine.
In this period, a latrine would have consisted usually of a plank of wood over a hole in the ground or in the floor of a building, usually some sort of outhouse, which would let out
into something such as a cesspit, a stream, a ditch, a moat, or a drain.
cesspit were often feats of engineering.
“While they were, sometimes, just big holes in the ground, many of them were reinforced”
with wood, or less often stone, to prevent groundwater pollution. Some latrine would often be shared by all of the inhabitants of a given plot of land, although larger multi-hole latrines were sometimes used in monasteries. And some cities, like London, even had public, necessary houses, with multiple latrine holes that opened up into a single cesspit.
As you might expect, wealthier people tended to have more elaborately constructed latrines. This applied to the above-ground parts as well, most notably with the construction of latrines inside the home. If you've ever visited an old castle, for example, you might have seen a little part
“jutting out from the wall on the outside.”
That's called a garter robe, and it was basically a medieval toilet.
Named after storage closets where valuables or lemons would be kept, these would be small chambers that offered the user some privacy. Sometimes these would open up directly to the outside, emptying into a moat or some other drainage system, but often they were connected to a latrine that led out into a cesspit. These systems could be impressive, but of course they were not without their challenges.
A cesspit needed proper drainage. Drainage issues could result in things like contaminated groundwater, but also, and perhaps more urgently, damage to the structure of the latrine and any overlying buildings themselves. Rotting was a major concern for latrines reinforced with wood. Then cesspit were emptied by hand, on an annual or semi-annual basis, or otherwise the
waste continually boarded up until a new latrine had to be opened. But some cesspit had more advanced systems of drainage. One solution for the drainage problem was the installation of channel drains, which utilized gravity to let waste out from the cesspit into, say, a flowing river. These could work marvelously well, but, like modern plumbing systems, they were also susceptible
to clogs or structural damage. And as the attendees of that fateful hufftag in air fort would find out, when channel drain systems failed to work properly, wood in boards began to rot, and nobody took steps to remedy the issue, disaster would ensue. 12th century Germany consisted of a constellation of Dutchies, counties, and principalities,
all loosely aligned under the authority of the Holy Roman Empire, with each Duke, Count and Prince largely sovereign over his own territory. Political life was often tense, as ruling nobles constantly sought to increase their power. Worders frequently expanded and contracted as wars, shifting alliances, and political machinations saw land pass back and forth between nobles.
Of course, these were rarely clean or easy transfers of jurisdiction. It wasn't uncommon for two or more parties to claim sovereignty over the same piece of land at the same time. This was the case for Ludwig III, the land grave, a German rank of nobility roughly equivalent to account of Thuringer, and the archbishop of Mites, Conrad of Vittelsbach.
Keep in mind that during this period, high-ranking clergy, like bishops, arch...
cardinals, often exercised political as well as religious power in their respective domains.
“In this case, Conrad was both the archbishop and the Elector of Mites, a title akin”
to Prince, meaning he both oversaw his own territory, and got to play a role in electing the Holy Roman Emperor. The territories of Ludwig's county and Conrad's archbishopric abutted each other. In fact, they sort of overlap with each man claiming his land to be, perhaps slightly larger than it was.
Their territories had not always been quite so disputed, but around 1179, the Duke of Saxony
and Bavaria Heinrich the Lion was stripped of his holdings by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I of Arbosa. This created a power vacuum that resulted in an even more tenuous contested web of territories than had existed before.
“By 1184, five years later, Ludwig and the archbishop had developed a land dispute over”
the city of Airfort that had become so heated it drew the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor. But we don't know much of the details of how this contentious situation developed specifically.
Some sources point to the archbishop's construction of a fortified castle in or near the city
around 1180, but it's unclear whether that was in fact the inciting incident, or simply a move made as part of a pre-existing conflict. In any case, the dispute boiled down to an argument over whether the clergy or the lay nobility should have control over Airfort. This was a pressing issue that touched not only on the daily lives of the people living
in the city, but also on bigger debates over the rights of religious, verse secular powers
“that had overtaken Europe in the wake of the investiture controversy and the wars of”
the wealth and guillotine that followed. After some four years of conflict over this land, the Holy Roman Emperor had had enough. He sent his son, Heinrich VI, the king of Germany, to mediate the matter in the summer of 1184. Heinrich traveled to Airfort and called a Hoftag on July 25th, where he would mediate
a piece between Ludwig and the archbishop. The meeting drew an audience of nobles and high-ranking clergy from all around the area, each of whom sought both to help mediate the meeting and possibly to act in their best interests. This is disagree over whether the Hoftag was held at the cathedral, provosts, building, or the bishop's residence, but we do know that it was nearby the Airfort's cathedral
and that the meeting took place on the second floor of whatever building it was in.
Over 60 people, some sources say over 100, crowded the meeting room as the proceedings began. We know little about how the meeting went. To possible the nobles shouted over each other, jogging to get a word in. Maybe it was a friendly gathering with everyone acting in good faith, trying to maintain peace and reach a resolution.
Maybe it was only getting started and clergy and nobles were still asking after each other's families and children. We do know that at one point King Heinrich and the archbishop walked over to a window to speak privately, then all of a sudden a rumble tore through the building. The walls began to shake and before the meetings attendees even realized what was happening,
the floor collapsed beneath them. In his book of German legends, the 19th century German folklorist Ludwig Beckstein recounted the story of "the Count's Proverb". His story centered on a noble, Count Heinrich VII of Schwarzberg. As Beckstein told it, Count Heinrich had a nasty habit.
Whenever there was something he didn't want to do or didn't think he could do, he would stay in a huff, quote, "If I did that, I'd have to drown in the privy. You can probably see where the story is going."
Beckstein's tale was a fictionalized account of the Air Force latrine disaste...
did actually happen.
“He altered some of the historical details.”
It was Count Heinrich the first who attended, for example, not the seventh, but the basic
contours of the story remained, with an ironic twist in the form of his Heinrichs tragically prescient catchphrase. In both the story and real life, the second floor of the building collapsed, the force of which collapsed, the first floor, and everyone, saved for King Heinrich and Archbishop Conrad fell into the cesspit below.
A few survived the fall, but most did not. In reality, we have very few contemporary sources about the actual collapse. And what we do have doesn't offer much in the way of details on how the collapse happened.
Leader writers, suppose, that the beams supporting the second floor where the Hufftag were
held had been rotting for some time, and the weight of so many people caused it to collapse. As we don't know which building this was exactly, it's hard for us to know whether a latrine contributed to that rotting. If that were the case, it would have had to have been a wood reinforced latrine that reached the second floor.
It's also possible that the collapse was unrelated, and the cesspit was simply an unfortunate landing place for the collapsing building.
“By their way, the cesspit and its draining system seems to have played an essential role”
in the tragic way the disaster played out. Some sources say that the building's cesspit had a channel drain system, which would have emptied out into the nearby gare or river. This would have meant that when everything collapsed, the sudden inflow of materials and bodies would have forced the entire system to flow wildly and uncontrollably out to the river.
The result was a whirling pit of death. Most estimates say about 60 of the meetings attendees died as a result of the collapse. Some died from the fall, others were crushed by debris, and others were, "I'm sorry, drowned in the sewage," or asphyxated in its toxic fumes.
“The chronicle of St. Peter's in Airfort, which began to be compiled about 25 years after”
the fact in 1208, listed some of the noble men who died in the collapse. Count Friedrich the first of Abenberg, Count Heinrich the first of Schwarzberg, Count Burghardt of Vartburg, and Berenjert von Wellington, among other "lesser nobles whom the chronicle felt were not necessary to record." Landgrave Ludwig, one of the main two parties involved in the dispute that was a reason
for all of this, fell into the sewage, but luckily was rescued and survived, seemingly with no major injuries. King Heinrich and the archbishop had to cling to the window as they awaited rescue, but they also eventually escaped unharmed. Disgusted and shell-shocked, King Heinrich departed from Airfort with his retinue almost
immediately, never to return.
In addition to its relatively quick entrance into the annals of local folklore, the Airfort latrine disaster impacted the lines of succession of much of the local nobility, as estates past sons, brothers, and even daughters of the deceased. As for the disputes between Landgrave Ludwig and Archbishop Conrad, that remains unsolved to this day.
That's the very gross story of the Airfort latrine disaster, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about another interesting thing that happened in a pit in Airfort. Hi, this is Joe Interestine, host of the Spirit.our podcast, where we talk about astrology, needle charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life, and I just sat down with a mini driver.
The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. After storyteller and unapologetic, aquarium visionary, Aquarius is all about freedom
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Aquarius, like our misunderstood, a son, and venous in Aquarius, in her 7th house, spark
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He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it. If you're navigating your own transformation, or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must-listen. Listen to the Spirit.our podcast, starting on February 24th, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple
Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on purpose podcast. My latest episode is with Hillary Duff, singer, actress, and multi-plattener artists.
Hillary opens up about complicated family dynamics, motherhood, and releasing our first record
in over 10 years. We talk about what it's taken to grow up in the entertainment industry and stay grounded through every chapter.
“It's a raw and honest conversation about identity, evolution, and building a life that truly”
matters. You desire in family like this picture, and that's not reality, a lot of the time it's for people. My sister and I don't speak, it's definitely a very painful part of my life, and I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now.
Listen to on purpose, with Jay Shetty, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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Her podcast, thanks dad, it's full of funny, heartfelt conversations with actors, including
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Today, if I had a gold ingot for every time something noteworthy happened in a pit in Airfort, well, I'd have two gold ingots. Actually, in fact, in 1998, archaeologists excavated 14 gold ingots, among other treasures, hidden in the wall of a medieval cellar entry, under the Michael Estross, a small street in Airfort, where the structure of a medieval synagogue had been discovered during excavations
a few years prior. It was an extraordinary discovery. In addition to the gold ingots, there were over 3000 torn-SL silver coins, a kind of coin that commonly used in the Middle Ages and early modern periods, constituting the largest extent collection of these kind of coins in the world.
There were also 700 works of goldsmithing, dating to the 13th and 14th centuries. There was silver tableware, gilded goblets from the early 14th century, garment-applicates and belt-adornments, eight broaches with inlayed stones, and eight rings. The most magnificent of the rings, and the most telling about the cache and its history, was in Ashkenazi Jewish wedding ring, one of the very few to survive from the 14th century
and one of the very few to be found in Germany. The ring was struck in gold without any stones as was tradition, and featured an intricate engraving of a gothic tower, and above it, the Hebrew phrase "muzzle-tove", meaning "good fate" or "good fortune", a phrase of "congratulations" traditionally offered at significant life events, like weddings.
It is this ring, which seems to have allowed scholars to figure out where this mass of treasure came from, and begin to guess at who might have hidden it. In 1349 as the black death tore throughout Europe, many communities found a convenient scapegoat in Jewish people, blaming them for causing the pandemic or believing that they facilitated its spread.
There are many reasons why these theories developed, but the most significant impact was the widespread murders and exiles of European Jewish communities. In March 1349, the city of Airfort did just that. In what came to be known as the Airfort Massacre between March 21st and 22nd, mobs lynched anywhere from 100 to 3,000 Jewish people throughout the city.
As the violence erupted, many members of the Jewish community chose to set fire to their
Homes and possessions, choosing death over the violence of the mob.
Others chose to hide their possessions, potentially hoping that perhaps they could escape
and come back for them later.
“It is believed that one of them, potentially a money-changer or merchant named Kalman V.A.”
hid his treasure before he was killed, either hoping that he would survive the mob and be able to retrieve it, or knowing that his murderers would not be able to profit from his death.
Following the massacre, the remaining members of the Jewish community were exiled from the
city. They would return a few years later and re-establish a new community in the city before being exiled again in 1458.
“The hidden treasure, however, remained in Airfort untouched and intact for over 600 years.”
Today it remains on permanent display at the restored old synagogue, just steps from where it was found.
Global blood is a production of eye-heart radio and grim in mild from Aaron Manky.
Noble blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah's Wick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Julia Milani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Rima Il-Kali, and executive producers Aaron Manky, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. AGOWOTA is your host for the 2026 iHeartPodcast Awards, live at South by Southwest. Hi, it's Jill interesting, host of the spirit daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Christian Williams.
“It can change you in the best way possible, dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns”
and the embodiment of Pisces in tuition, with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart, listen to the spirit daughter podcast, starting on February 24th, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on purpose podcast.
My latest episode is with Hillary Duff, singer, actress, and multi-plattener artists. You desire in family like this picture and that's not reality. My sister and I don't speak, it's definitely a very painful part of my life, and I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now. Listen to on purpose, with Jay Shetty, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. This is an iHeartPodcast, guaranteed human.
