The Mouse Tower

The Mouse Tower

An Old German Horror Story Today’s Billionaires Might Want to Reflect On

Once upon a time, in what is now Germany, there stood a tower on a small island in the Rhine River. It’s called the Mäuseturm, or Mouse Tower, and despite its charming name, the legend attached to it is the stuff of nightmares. Not for the peasants or common folk mind you, but for the wealthy elite.

According to the story, there was a bishop named Hatto II, a man of immense power, wealth, and, most importantly, utter contempt for the poor. During a famine, desperate peasants came begging for grain from the bishop’s stockpiles, grain that was rotting in abundance in his warehouses. In an act of cruelty that rivals today’s billionaires buying up entire neighborhoods and jacking up rent, Bishop Hatto told the starving masses he’d help.

He lured them into a barn under the pretense of feeding them, then locked the doors and set the whole thing on fire. His exact words, according to legend? “Like rats, they eat the grain. So like rats, they must burn.”