Vincenz Weitz was a teamster who spent most of his time going back and forth from Frankfurt. He was also a virulent anti-Semite, who had been one of the people who blamed the Jews for the October 1634 explosion at a redoubt in Sachsenhausen, which had been caused by someone taking a lit candle into an explosives bunker. Since Weitz and his men had been carrying antique weapons, they were placed, at least in local village legends, as a lost unit of mercenaries from a much earlier period.