Flood lament from 1784

The winter of 1783/1784 was extremely cold in central Europe. When the unusually large amount of snow and ice melted in the spring, many German cities witnessed severe floods. These flood events are now considered one of the most severe natural disasters in continental Europe in the early modern period.

The scribe of the Jewish community of the city Bonn, a man named Simon of Copenhagen, wrote an extensive and lively report titled “Flood Lament” (Sipur Bechi Neharot). The text was printed in original Hebrew in Amsterdam the same year, 1784. It starts with the following exclamation:

“Hear me brothers and my people. Open your ears and listen to my words. These were days when my hair turned white and I was made better.”

Unfortunately I could only find an excerpt of a German translation of the text. I translated it roughly into English, using DeepL.

“It was January 25, 1784, and there was a heavy frost. People began to cross the Rhine on foot and with carts. You could walk across the river to our cemetery and bury the dead. That was a great miracle. God was merciful, he let the people cross and the water didn’t hit the people, he didn’t want to wipe them out. It stayed that way until well into February.

Then the feast of Purim approached, and suddenly a month of joy turned into a month of mourning. The Souls of the people were broken and their hearts melted. Everything became rigid.

After 31 days of heavy frost, the ice suddenly split and swallowed everything on it. God’s will was difficult to understand. Many did not come back and the water threatened to kill us all. At first the water stood in our alley up to our ankles, then up to our knees, then up to our hips. People could no longer get out of the houses, it was a curse.

The water was endless, wave followed wave. It became the sea and rushed like the sea. Nobody could leave the house. In the morning, the water rose even higher and people had to retreat to the upper floor of the house or the roof. Not a soul had any peace. Many brothers rescued small children. People jumped from roof to roof to save themselves. They tried to reach the other side of the street. You could no longer put your feet on the ground because you could no longer see it.

Everyone screamed for help. Our community pleaded with the Court to send barges to take the inhabitants to dry places. God heard them cry out and sent help.”

I found the German text on the extensive website of the Brückenhofmuseum in Königswinter (North-Rine Westpahlia).

Venexia

Eventually I will have to stop collecting comics about Venice – there are simply too many. It’s no wonder comic artists are attracted to Venice. As Kia Vahland has recently written in a German newspaper article: “The principle of resilience through beauty has a long history in Venice, which is the only reason why it still works so amazingly today.”

Here is a recent example from the legendary Asterix series. “Astérix et la Transitalique” is a comic issued in 2017 and it features only a very short sequence about Venice. This snippet is from my German edition:

The captions read: “We are building our city Venexia. The area is a bit swampy, but the view is belissima! And so peaceful!” “But your city is sinking!” “It’s only the water of the lagoon rising! The climate is not what it used to be!”

It would be worthwhile to investigate how the topic of flooding gained prominence in depictions of Venice in comics over the last 100 years and when flooding started replacing the other iconic features of La Serenissima. (I am sure Venice popped up in the Asterix series before, but I did not check.)

Material and spiritual barriers

Sculpture of fish god from Lepenski Vir, likely to have been part of the people’s spiritual responses to flooding. Credit: Mickey Mystique/Wikimedia Commons

In a beautiful article from 2019, Patrick Nunn gives a couple of examples for protection architecture that serve both material and spiritual purposes. I would argue, that this is the case for any protection structure also today, at least if it is visible. The interesting question here is not, whether a spiritual barrier was or is working today, but rather what functions it fulfills for the well being of the community and thus its protection in a broader sense.

Here are some excerpts with examples from Brittany (France), Serbia and the UK:

“Take the stone lines at Carnac, in Brittany, some of which extend for kilometres and involve thousands ofmenhirs, once regarded as boundary markers or memorials to fallen warriors. The idea of Serge Cassen that these stone lines represent “a cognitive barrier” between the physical and metaphysical worlds intended to halt the disastrous impacts of rising sea level in the Gulf of Morbihan more than 6.000 years ago is in keeping with what we are learning elsewhere.

“Neatly arranged deposits of once-valuable objects such as stone tools, even human remains, may have been intentionally created as votive offerings to divinities to stop the ocean’s rise. Cemeteries may have been intentionally situated on coasts, symbolically stabilising them in the minds of local peoples. Sandstone sculptures of fish gods from Lepenski Vir inSerbia may have been totems intended to prevent inundation.”

“Even physical barriers, long recognised as useless against the encroaching ocean, may have become symbolic; an example of wooden structures from Flag Fen near Peterborough in the UK was interpreted in this way by Francis Pryor.”

Power and disaster

In Greek and Roman Antiquity extreme weather events and natural disasters like droughts, earthquakes and floods were a frequent occurrence. They also offered important stages for the display of political power. Political leaders would rush to the occasion to help the population out of their hardship and make sure that other powers and posterity notice. In fact, according to historian Holger Sonnabend, political power was recognized mainly by the ability to help and rebuild. This was even sometimes used by suffering cities to get as much support as possible from rivaling politicians.

Accompanying the imperative of help was the public display of grieve. Compassion was expected of those in power and it was common for leaders to require historians to write up their grieve in dramatic ways. Here is an example from the 7. Century CE by Georgios Kedrenos, who describes in retrospect the expression of grieve of emperor Justinian upon the earth quake in Antiochia in May 526.

“He threw aside his crown and his imperial clothes, and, dressed in dirty rags, wept for several days, and even on feast days he entered the church in pitiful robes because he could not bear to put on any signs of his power.”

The educator and historian Libanius (314 – 392 CE) on the other hand wrote in an eulogy on emperor Julian that the earth itself mourned with an earth quake and several tsunamis in the Mediterranean in 365 CE the loss of this great emperor the year before.

“Earth truly has been fully sensible of her loss, and has honoured the hero by an appropriate shearing off of her tresses, shaking off, as a horse doth his rider, so many and such great cities. In Palestine several; of the Libyans all and every one. Prostrate lie the largest towns of Sicily, prostrate all of Greece save one; the fair Nicaea lies in ruins; the city, pre-eminent in beauty, totters to her fall, and has no confidence for the time to come! These are the honours paid to him by Earth, or if you choose, by Neptune himself; but on the part of the Seasons, famines and pestilences, destroying alike man and beast, just as though it were not lawful for creatures upon earth to enjoy health now that he has departed! What wonder then is it, if such being the state of things, many a one, like myself, deems it a loss not to have died before!”

(full text in english)

For the disaster of 365 in the Mediterranean see also this post.

Heracles, the first hydraulic engineer

According to historian Terje Tvedt the Greek god and hero Heracles derived from a much older Egyptian hero of similar name. The now submerged city Heracleion off the coast of the Nile delta was named after the god and Heracles plays a central role in the ancient literature of the region. The historian Diodorus of Sicily, who lived in the 1st. Century BCE, recounts Heracles’ story in detail. Among the many feats he describes, several are connected to hydrology. The most famous one is of course from the Twelve Labors of Heracles. Here is the original passage from Diodorus’ History:

“He received a Command from Eurystheus to cleanse the stables of Augeas, and to do this without the assistance of any other man. These stables contained an enormous mass of dung which had accumulated over a great period, and it was a spirit of insult which induced Eurystheus to lay upon him the command to clean out this dung. Heracles declined as unworthy of him to carry this out upon his shoulders, in order to avoid the disgrace which would follow upon the insulting command; and so, turning the course of the Alpheius river, as it is called, into the stables and cleansing them by means of the stream, he accomplished Labour in a single day, and without suffering any insult.”

Hercules the engineer as seen by Francisco de Zuraban

The story is reminiscent of the way ancient Egyptian society used the annual floods of the river Nile to fertilize but also clean the farm land along the river banks.

Here are two other hydraulic engineering feats:

“When Heracles arrived at the farthest points of the continents of Libya and Europe which lie upon the ocean, he decided to set up these pillars to commemorate his campaign. And since he wished to leave upon the ocean a monument which would be had in everlasting remembrance, he built out both the promontories, they say, to a great distance; consequently, whereas before that time a great space had stood between them, he now narrowed the passage, in order that by making it shallow and narrow​ he might prevent the great sea-monsters from passing out of the ocean into the inner sea, and that at the same time the fame of their builder might be held in everlasting remembrance by reason of the magnitude of the structures. Some authorities, however, say just the opposite, namely, that the two continents were originally joined and that he cut a passage between them, and that by opening the passage he brought it about that the ocean was mingled with our sea. On this question, however, it will be possible for every man to think as he may please.”

“A thing very much like this he had already done in Greece. For instance, in the region which is called Tempê, where the country is like a plain and was largely covered with marshes, he cut a channel through the territory which bordered on it, and carrying off through this ditch all the water of the marsh he caused the plains to appear which are now in Thessaly along the Peneius river. But in Boeotia he did just the opposite and damming the stream which flowed near the Minyan city of Orchomenus he turned the country into a lake and caused the ruin of that whole region. But what he did in Thessaly was to confer a benefit upon the Greeks, whereas in Boeotia he was exacting punishment from those who dwelt in Minyan territory, because they had enslaved the Thebans.”

Full text in english translation

The coast of North Frisia over the last nine centuries

Storm surge events on the North Sea

12/26/838
First documented storm surge in the North Sea; Approximately 2,500 deaths in what is now the Netherlands.

2/17/1164
First Julian flood: 20,000 dead; First collapse of the Jade Bay, major damage in the Elbe area.

1/16/1219
First Marcellus flood: 36,000 dead: major floods also in the Elbe area; first conveyed eyewitness report.

12/28/1248
Allerkindslein flood: High loss of human life. The historic Elbe island of Gorieswerder is divided into several parts.

12/14/1287
Lucia Flood: Beginning of the formation of the Dollart, 50,000 dead.

11/23/1334
Clemens Flood: Expansion of the Jade Bay.

1/16/1362
Second Marcellus Flood, Grote Manndranke: 100,000 dead: first collapse of the Dollart, expansion of Leybucht, Hariebucht, Jade Bay and Eider Estuary, sinking of large parts of North Frisia.

10/09/1374
First Dionyslus flood: Largest extent of the Leybucht up to the city of Norden, sinking of the village of Westeel near Norden.

9/10/1377
Second Dionysiusflut: Dikes near Lütetsburg and Bargebur
torn, the waves hit the walls of the Dominican monastery in Nord.

11/21/1412
Cacilien flood: An entire village at the mouth of the Este was destroyed, and the Elbe island of Hahnöfersand was separated from the mainland.

11/1/1436
Allerhelligen flood: Flooding on the entire North Sea coast, especially in Eiderstedt and Nordstrand.

1/6/1470
Epiphany Flood: Flooding in Eiderstedt, no permanent land losses.

09/26/1509
Cosmas and Damian flood: Breakthrough of the Ems
near Emden, largest expansion of the Dollart, last expansion of the Jade Bay to the northwest.

01/16/1511
Antonius flood, ice flood: breakthrough between Jade and Weser.

10/31 and 11/1/1532
Third All Saints Flood: Several thousand dead in North Frisia, first peak value recorded in the church of Klibüll; Sinking of Osterbur and Ostbense in East Frisia.

11/01/1570
Fourth All Saints Flood: Flooding of the marshes from Flanders to Eiderstedt: large dike breaches in the Altes Land as well as in the Vier- und Marschenlanden; Sinking of the villages of Oldendorf and Westbense near Esens: 9,000 to 10,000 dead between Ems and Weser. High tide mark at the Suurhusen church at NN +4.40 m.

2/26/1625
Carnival flood: An ice flood, dike breaches and major damage in East Frisia and Oldenburg, in the Altes Land and Hamburg, many dikes breaches on Jade and Weser.

10/11/1634
Second Grote Manndranke: Strand Island sinks; What remains are the islands of Nordstrand and Pellworm; at least 8,000 dead.

2/22/1651
Petri flood: “Dane chains” broken on Juist and Langeoog, Dornumersiel was destroyed, there were dike breaches on the mainland.

11/12/1686
Martin’s Flood: Severe damage to dikes from the Netherlands to the Elbe.

12/24 to 12/25/1717
Christmas flood: 11,150 dead from Holland to the Danish coast: the largest storm surge known to date with flooding and devastation of enormous proportions.

12/31/1720 to 01/01/1721
New Year’s flood: higher than Christmas flood; Destruction of the dikes that were poorly repaired after 1717; Sinking of the villages Bettewehr II and Itzendorf

2/3 to 2/4/1825
February flood: 800 dead; There were many dike breaches along the coast and severe loss of dunes on the islands. Highest storm surge on the Elbe until 1962.

1/1 to 1/2/1855
January flood: Heavy destruction on the East Frisian Islands, storm surge mark on Norderney at NN +4.26 m.

3/13/1906
March flood: highest storm surge recorded to date on the East Frisian coast.

1/31 to 2/1/1953
Dutch flood: worst natural disaster of the 20th century in the North Sea area. In the Netherlands approx. 1,800 dead, England and Belgium more than 2,000 dead; Total damage more than €500 million: no major damage to the German coast, but an impetus to check the dikes.

2/16 to 2/17/1962
February storm surge, Second Julian flood: 340 dead, 19 of them in Lower Saxony, approx. 28,000 apartments or houses damaged and 1,300 completely destroyed; highest storm surge to date East of the Jade with 61 dike breaches in Lower Saxony; The Elbe area and its tributaries were particularly affected.

1/3/1976
January flood: highest storm surge to date on almost all pegs on the German North Sea coast: numerous dike breaches in Kehdingen and the Haseldorfer Marsch.

11/24/1981
November flood: Highest peak water level in North Frisia with NN +4.72 m at the Dagebüll gauge.

1/28/1994
January flood: Highest peak water levels on the Ems with NN +4.75 m at the Weener gauge and on the Wese with NN +5.33 m at the Vegesack gauge.

12/3/1999
Anatol: short-term increase with very high water levels in the entire North Sea region; The storm subsided before the astronomical flood occurred in Cuxhaven, otherwise the values ​​of 1976 had been exceeded in the Elbe area.

11/01/2006
Fifth All Saints Flood: Very severe storm surge with water levels exceeding the 1994 levels in the Ems area, dike collapses on the East Frisian islands of Juist, Langeoog and Wangerooge…

This list was assembled by Christian von Wissel of Bremer Zentrum für Baukultur. It was part of the exhibition “Deichstadt #1” in spring 2024.

River as a landscape – Nilotic landscapes

The “Palestrina Mosaic” or “Nile mosaic of Palestrina”, a town near Italy’s capital Rome, is a late Hellenistic floor mosaic depicting the Nile in its passage from the Blue Nile to the Mediterranean.

Around 100 BCE, Nile landscapes were quite a fashion in Roman art. In fact, wikipedia has a whole article on “Nilotic landscapes” as an art subgenre of its own. The allure of the Nile and it’s natural and social surrounding must have been so great across the Mediterranean world, that from Ancient Egypt to the Minoans (2.000 BCE), the Greeks (500 BCE), the Romans (until the 7. Century CE) and into the Renaissance in the 16. Century, Nile landscapes were a popular motive in painting as well as mosaics and tapestry.

The Palestrina mosaic shows beautifully how water, land, vegetation and social life were interconnected in the Egyptian societies along the Nile. It’s a fluid, constantly changing and evolving concept of landscape and of society, I find very inspirational.

Alexandria II

This is the introduction to “Pharos and Pharillon” a book by British writer and literary critic E.M. Forster about Alexandria. The book was published in 1923. Forster was stationed in Alexandria during his service in the British military and wrote two books about the port city.

“Before there was civilization in Egypt, or the delta of the Nile had been formed, the whole country as far south as modern Cairo lay under the sea. The shores of this sea were a limestone desert. The coast line was smooth usually, but at the north-west corner a remarkable spur jutted out from the main mass. It was less than a mile wide, but thirty miles long. Its base is not far from Bahig, Alexandria is built half-way down it, its tip is the headland of Aboukir. On either side of it there was once deep salt water.

Centuries passed, and the Nile, issuing out of its crack above Cairo, kept carrying down the muds of Upper Egypt and dropping them as soon as its current slackened. In the north-west corner they were arrested by this spur and began to silt up against it. It was a shelter not only from the outer sea, but from the prevalent wind. Alluvial land appeared; the large shallow lake of Mariout was formed; and the current of the
Nile, unable to escape through the limestone barrier, rounded the headland of Aboukir and entered the outer sea by what was known in historical times as the “Canopic” mouth.

To the north of the spur and more or less parallel to it runs a second range of limestone. It is much shorter, also much lower, lying mainly below the surface of the sea in the form of reefs, but without it there would have been no harbours (and consequently no Alexandria), because it breaks the force of the waves. Starting at Agame, it continues as a series of rocks across the entrance of the modern harbour. Then it
re-emerges to form the promontory of Ras el Tin, disappears into a second series of rocks that close the entrance of the Eastern Harbour, and makes its final appearance as the promontory of Silsileh, after which it rejoins the big spur.

Such is the scene where the following actions and editations take place; that limestone ridge, with alluvial country on one side of it and harbours on the other, jutting from the desert, pointing towards the Nile; a scene unique in Egypt, nor have the Alexandrians ever been truly Egyptian. Here Africans, Greeks and Jews combined to make a city; here a thousand years later the Arabs set faintly but durably the impress of
the Orient; here after secular decay rose another city, still visible, where I worked or appeared to work during a recent war. Pharos, the vast and heroic lighthouse that dominated the first city—under Pharos I have grouped a few antique events; to modern events and to personal impressions I have given the name of Pharillon, the obscure successor of Pharos, which clung for a time to the low rock of Silsileh and then slid unobserved into the Mediterranean.”

full book here.

Political flood images

In Germany, the imagery of flood or flooding and of Noah’s Ark is frequently used in the political discourse to refer to undesired migration. Since the 1990s this dehumanizing topos was in high demand and was used by mainstream media and radical political parties alike. The following are covers of Germany’s biggest news magazine from 1991 and from 2006, fifteen years apart. The main headline is identical: “Ansturm der Armen” which translates as “storm (or onrush) of the poor”.

Political extremists picked the imagery up instantly, as illustrated by this add by a right-wing party from 1991 and another recent cover from a right-wing political magazine: