Abstract
From the mid-1580s wine production all over Central Europe dropped to a low level that was maintained beyond the turn of the century. This is concluded on the basis of four series of wine production from Lower Austria, Western Hungary, Württemberg, and the region surrounding the lake of Zürich (Switzerland) for the period 1550–1630. This long sequence of crop failures is related to a temperature decline in all seasons, particularly in winter, affecting Europe north of the Alps. The economic, social and political consequences of this climatic “gearshift” are investigated from the example of Lower Austria. It is shown that it had far-reaching effects for major social groups depending on the wine economy and the revenues of the Habsburg crown.
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References
Manuscript sources and archives
Vienna City Archives (WStLA): Yearly accounts of the city hospital, 1550–1680.
Imperial Chamber Archives (HKA): Niederösterreichische Herrschaftsakten (nö. HA) E 37/A/1–3.
Lower Austrian Country Archives, Department of Estates (NöLA, S.A.):
Ständische Akten B 4/17/1
Landtagshandlungen ungebunden 1592–93.
Town Archives of Sopron, Hungary: Tithe registers.
Archives of the diocese of Györ in Györ, Hungary: Tithe registers of Weiden/See.
Archives of Gumpoldskirchen, Lower Austria: Wine-tax registers (Boxes 203–204).
Archives of the Abbey of the Scots in Vienna: Tithe registers of Pulkau (Scrinia 151–152).
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Endnotes
The manuscript sources for these data are listed in the reference section.
The following correlation coefficients are significant at the 0,1%-level: Lower Austria-Western Hungary: 0,75; Lower Austria-Württemberg: 0,39; Lower-Austria-Zürichsee: 0,38; Württemberg-Zürichsee: 0,45. The last coefficient is about the same as those Pfister (1981) found between his aggregated series of wine yields for Switzerland and the German estate of Johannesberg in the middle Rhine area. There is no significant correlation between Western Hungary and Württemberg or Lake Zürich.
Wine exports on the Rhine from Alsace through Strassbourg followed the very same trend (Kintz, 1984)
Data in Carsten, 1965. The correlations between the wine yields of the Vienna city hospital, the amount of wine exported (r=0,83, s<0,001) and the import duty levied in Upper Bavaria (r=0,87, s<0,001) are highly significant.
“Pro vino plerique cocta cervesia se ingurgitabant, cuius ubique locorum incredibilis copia cocta est” (Schiffmann, 1910)
In January 1587, the hospital had a stock of 6,630 hl, one third was old wine. Until January 1588 the stock fell to 3,726 hl and the proportion of old wines in it rose to 81%. In January 1590 the stock had decreased to 1,002 hl, of which 22% were old wines.
Sources: Hildebrand (1953) contains data on the receipts from the consumption tax on beverages (“Ungeld”) by the Lower Austrian “Vicedom”. 60.000 florins per year have been added to account for the part of the consumption tax farmed by the Lower Austrian estates. The sums of the direct taxes voted by the Lower Austrian estates are taken from documents in NÖLA, S.A., Ständische Akten B 4/17/1.
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Landsteiner, E. (1999). The Crisis of Wine Production in Late Sixteenth-Century Central Europe: Climatic Causes and Economic Consequences. In: Pfister, C., Brázdil, R., Glaser, R. (eds) Climatic Variability in Sixteenth-Century Europe and Its Social Dimension. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9259-8_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9259-8_12
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