"Legions of locusts
in a terrible army sent the Almighty Lord God in his righteous zeal for the sake of our sins", so the pastor and adjuncto M. Jacobo Crell from Roda (now Stadtroda) reported it. On Thursday the 17th(Jul.)/27th(Gre.) August 1693 the locusts, coming from south across the Rotehofbachtal and Geisenhain, penetreted the area around Roda. There many settled in the fields to the left and right of the Roda river and caused great damage to the still standing barley, the summer cereals, hemp, millet, peas, beans, vetches and the aftermath. Because the swarm of locusts darkened the sky above the Rotehofbachtal on his approach to Roda, the people assumed that it would be a fire in the forest and smoke would rise. The bells were ringing as a fire alarm, and fire-fighting teams were put together and sent out.
The wandering route of the locusts led from the Black Sea via the Danube, Vienna, Eger (today Cheb) and Plauen into the duchy of Saxony-Weimar; other swarms flew to Silesia, Bohemia and the Inn Valley. The locusts appeared in Neustadt an der Orla at about 9 o'clock and took their way via Stadtroda to Jena after a rest. However, these locusts were only the forerunners, another three large swarms reached Jena on the 20th(Jul.)/30th(Gre.) August. The sound, that these clusters made when they were flying, reminded the people of a waterfall. They settled around Jena and all surrounding localities too. While it is reported that the locusts knee-high coverd the ground in Hungary, they encamped a quarter-cubit or one palm thick on the ground around Jena, a feast for pigs, chickens, geese and ducks, but also for birds of prey, cats and dogs. They rested so numerous on trees, that the branches bent to the ground or even broke. It is recorded, that the locusts despised the sweet grass, but they fell upon old and dry grass, reeds, rushes as well as the like in the valley of the Saale. The hop harvest was destroyed around Jena - bitten off, but not devoured. Also were not attacked the trees and the vines, as well as turnips, carrots and cabbage. The droppings of the locusts shall have been lain so thick, that they could be swept together by a besom.
The locusts, which were settled around Jena and Lichtenhain (now part of Jena) on the 20th(Jul.)/30th(Gre.) August, continued theirs flight in direction Magdala and arrived Weimar and thus also Taubach at the 21st(Jul.)/31st(Gre.) August arround noon. The locusts shall have been settled two hands-thick here. To the north the locusts reached the Naumburg area. The greater number of locusts at Ilm and Saale shall be migrated to Silesia, carried by west wind. Incipient bad autumn weather let the locusts died in Thuringia until the end of September.
The gluttony of the locusts is described in the records as "… all the grass in the fields and what they have seen in corn and other plants were smooth guzzled away in an hour and it were so made bare away, that it looks as if it were burned with fire and swept away with besoms …".