Year Without a Summer

Beginning of July and the end of August 1816, there was frost periods in the northeastern United States. In eastern Canada and New England snow that reached a height of 30 centimeters in Quebec fell. This led to severe crop losses and consequently to sharp rise in grain prices, an outspoken famine it was still missing this year. The price of cereals reached one and a half times the level of 1815 until the following year (1817 ).

In Eastern Europe ( dominated by the continental climate ) and Scandinavia, however, little effect was observed. So the price of corn rose in Poland from 1815 to 1817 due to increased export demand by only a quarter.

So-called hunger Taler were a reminder of that time in Germany marked in some places; Other forms of memory are known pieces.

In the southwest of Germany, there was emigration, especially from Württemberg, where in 1816 the emigration ban was lifted. After the Russian crown Advertisers emigrants had invited had to emigrate to South Russia, for example, to Bessarabia, peaked about 1817 / 18th

Literary reflection

The British writer Mary Shelley spent the summer of 1816 with friends near Lake Geneva. They visited several times Lord Byron at the nearby Villa Diodati. Due to the extremely bad weather, the audience were often unable to leave the house. So they decided to each write a ghost story and to carry the other. Shelley wrote the story Frankenstein and Byron's personal physician, John Polidori (1795-1821) wrote The Vampyre - a vampire story long before the emergence of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Lord Byron did not finish his story; He processed impressions of this summer in the poem Darkness.