Profane hazard or divine judgement? Coping with urban fire in the 17th century

Abstract

?Zufall oder Gottesstrafe? Zur Wahrnehmung, Deutung und Verarbeitung von Stadtbr?nden im 17. Jahr hundert?. Urban Fires rather than floods, earthquakes or thunderstorms were the greatest threat to early modern cit ies. Open fireplaces in households and workshops, unsafe construction of buildings and poorly developed methods of fire prevention and fire fighting led to frequent outbursts of urban fires that could, once they had been sparked, hardly be restricted, and in many cases destroyed the greater part of the cities. Once a town was destroyed by fire, the first imperative was to tend the homeless and organise recon struction measures. But next to resolving the material dam age people also had to cope with the disaster psychologi cally. Similar to epidemics, famines, war, and other disas ters, urban fires were regarded as a punishment, inflicted by God to castigate humans for their sinful and impenitent be haviour. Beside the religious patterns of interpretation, rather secular ways of coping with the incident were wide spread. The aim of this study is to reveal various patterns of interpretation and agency that were available to the indi viduals concerned. It will be asked, if different explanations and coping strategies were attractive to different people and if the different models were perceived as compatible or mu tually exclusive by the contemporaries. On the 11th of August 1677, a fire broke out in the hanseatic city of Rostock. Within two days large parts of the town centre were reduced to rubble. A few days later, Pastor Christoph Stahlius gave a sermon in the church of St. Nicolai (STAHLIUS 1677), in which he explained the event to his congregation: The fire had come upon them as divine punishment, to castigate the sinful and im Address all communications to: Marie Luisa Allemeyer, Max-Planck-Institut f?r Geschich te, Hermann-F?ge Weg 11, 37073 G?ttingen, Germany; e-mail: Allemeyer@mpi-g.gwdg.de.