A Jewish moneylender's silver lay under his Erfurt cellar from the 1349 massacre until archaeologists found it in 1998

Erfurt's medieval Jewish community was one of the most prominent of its time. On 21 March 1349, as the plague spread, a mob attacked the Jewish quarter on the false claim that Jews had poisoned the wells. The quarter burned and the community was destroyed. Kalman von Wiehe, a Jewish moneylender, was the last recorded owner of the plot at Michaelisstraße 43, and it is confirmed that he did not survive. Looted Hebrew manuscripts passed to the city council and then to a church library. Jews returned a few years later and formed a second community, which the city council disbanded in 1458. In 1998, during building work near the old synagogue, archaeologists found a hoard under the wall of a cellar entrance on the plot. It held about 24 kilograms of silver coins and ingots, including 3,141 tornesel coins and 14 ingots, and more than 700 pieces of goldsmiths' work. One piece is a gold Jewish wedding ring with a Gothic tower and the Hebrew letters for "mazal tov". The objects date the burial to the 1349 massacre, and the city attributes the hoard to Kalman. No heir is recorded. The treasure was shown in Paris in 2007, in New York in 2008 and 2009, and in London and Tel Aviv. It is on permanent display in the cellar of Erfurt's Old Synagogue, now a museum.