Pesach during the plague of 1711

When COVID-19 canceled the traditional holiday of Pesach, we sent our collection officer into the archives to learn more about the past's handling of holidays during a pandemic. He has now returned with this account from 1700th-century Copenhagen.

By Thomas Bonnemann Egebæk

The summer of 1711 is remembered with sadness by the people of Copenhagen. The plague was loose in the king's city. It was almost 60 years since a similar situation had taken place. About 1/3 of the town's population lost their lives between July 1711 and April 1712. Little did one know that it would be the last time the plague would ravage Denmark, as it had been a frequent visitor to the country for the past 400 years.

The authorities took the best precautions at the time to prevent the infection. Households with infected people were quarantined for 40 days. When a household had been ravaged by disease, all clothing and textiles in the household had to be burned and doors had to be nailed shut, so that burglars did not become infected and carry the disease on. In 1711, the understanding of plague infection was that it got into people's clothes and bedding as well as the rooms where an infected person stayed.

During the summer and autumn of 1711, the daily death toll became so high that convicts had to be released from the prisons and the military deployed to establish mass graves outside Copenhagen's ramparts. It was decided that there was no time for ceremonies and the deceased should be buried as soon as possible. Copenhagen's Jews were buried side by side with Protestant Copenhageners during this time. Something that was otherwise unthinkable at the beginning of the 1700th century, when Jews and Christians were not equal in several areas in the Kingdom of Denmark.

A day of fasting and prayer was introduced by royal decree and was held on 21 August 1711. It was supposed to stem the plague and soften God's wrath against the Copenhagen population. All the king's subjects in his city had to keep this day holy, with the exception of rakes and nightmen, who still had the task of moving corpses from the streets and homes. Copenhagen's Jews gathered at Meyer Goldschmidt's synagogue in Badstuestræde, which was more of a prayer hall, but the only royally recognized synagogue in Copenhagen. The Jews gathered here again on 29 April 1712, which the king had declared a general day of thanksgiving and prayer for the end of the plague in Copenhagen. Whether the synagogue in Badstuestræde functioned as a meeting place for Copenhagen's Jews during the plague of 1711 is not known for sure, but services in the churches were not suspended. You probably have to admit that man has always sought meaning in such violent epidemics, and at the beginning of the 1700th century, most people turned to religion for answers and comfort.

Sources: Royal letters, 1711-1712