Bus Stop: Museumstraße  

Do you want to find out how much “Frau Hitt” is in you?

The Faculty of Economics and Statistics developed a grain price index for Tyrol around the time the Frau Hitt saga originated. This reflects the economic conditions and clearly shows the times of crisis in which bread was expensive and hunger widespread. Today we are doing better, but have we therefore become more generous and more supportive? Or is the message of the saga still relevant despite or even because of our increased standard of living?

Grain Price

What was the economic background of the Frau Hitt saga? This graph shows how the grain price in Tyrol changed between 1500 and 1800 (adjusted for purchasing power).

Price increases: The prices increase because the population in Tyrol and thus the demand grows, and silver comes to Europe from America. In addition, the beginnings of the Little Ice Age repeatedly lead to poor harvests.

Thirty Years War: The first years of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) are marked by “debasement of coinage" (the reduction of the precious metal content of coins). Later, the need to keep troops supplied and a plague epidemic take their toll.

Little Ice Age: Great hardship is caused by several crop failures in the 1690s, the passage of an imperial army in 1701 through Tyrol during the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the "Bavarian Rummel" in 1703, during which Bavarian troops invade Tyrol.

Napoleonic Wars: In 1805, inflation reaches its peak due to the upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars, various negative incidents and Tyrol falling to Bavaria.

  Faculty of Economics and Statistics

Illustration: © Patrick Bonato 2019