History—if one delves into its darkest recesses—can offer many bizarre and macabre facts. And when it comes to the infamous "Erfurt Latrine Disaster" (Erfurter Latrinensturz, in German), the two adjectives just mentioned are perfectly fitting.

The bizarre episode occurred during an assembly convened by the future Emperor Henry VI (1165–1197), son of Frederick I Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor (SRC). The purpose of the assembly was to mediate a heated and dangerous dispute between some lords of the imperial territories: Conrad of Mainz and Louis III of Thuringia. These political tensions between the two threatened the already precarious peace in the region, requiring decisive intervention from the imperial crown. To this end, the bishops and nobles of the most important families of medieval Germany were summoned to an old building adjacent to the cathedral in Erfurt, Thuringia, to try to resolve the dispute. Due—as medieval sources also mention—to the building's age and the wear and tear of its pillars and wooden floor beams, when everyone in the room was sitting together, the floor could not bear the weight and collapsed, sending the unfortunates plummeting into the latrine below, filled with sewage and waste. Many of them (60 victims according to contemporary estimates) thus met a horrible and slow death by drowning in excrement. Miraculously, the local archbishop, Conrad, and Henry VI managed to survive, as they were sitting in seats away from the epicentre of the collapse.

This tragedy had a powerful impact throughout the Empire and the medieval world of the 12th century, becoming a symbol of how even the highest officials of the Middle Ages could die common and horrible deaths, and of how the construction and proper maintenance of medieval daily life structures (in contrast to the preceding ancient Roman period) was very often not free from restoration and maintenance problems. To this day, the Erfurt latrine incident is perhaps considered the most bizarre of the entire Middle Ages.