Part 2—Sniffer Squads on the Odour Trail: Smog in Frankfurt
The fog phenomenon seen, and smelled, in London in the late 1800s had still not been eradicated by the midpoint of the next century. On the night of 22 January 1957, mysterious events occurred in Frankfurt am Main that were similar to those in Victorian London. As ‘all Frankfurt daily newspapers unanimously’ reported, adults, and especially children, were afflicted by headaches, dizzy spells, and nausea, while passers-by staggered around in the streets and telephoned from pubs, gasping for a doctor.1 What had happened? The Frankfurter Rundschau answered its own question as follows:
Continue reading From London Fog to Frankfurt Smog: Sensing Anthropogenic Weather Conditions from a Transurban Perspective in the Nineteenth and Twentieth CenturiesThe previous day, the residents of the city had gone about their business, like any other day, and had returned home for a well-earned rest in the evening. In the city centre there was the usual night-time bustle, and in the suburbs and residential areas a peaceful silence prevailed. You could even say there was a deathly silence in the air. Not even the slightest breeze. But it was precisely this silence that resulted in numerous calls to the police and doctors during the night, and in citizens angrily discussing ‘Frankfurt’s bad air’ the next morning.
- Willy Rosentreter, ‘Verpestung der Luft wird zur gefährlichen Plage’, Frankfurter Rundschau am Wochenende, 4 May and 11 May 1957. Transcript/typescript, Institute for the History of Frankfurt (ISG) MA_1095. [↩]