Germany – Schleswig-Holstein (Kiel, Lübeck, Helgoland) August 25, 2019
LŨBECK
Hanseatic City of Lübeck World Heritage Sites
European Hansemuseum. This excellent museum presents the Hanseatic League in a wonderful exhibit, explaining its origins, the life of Lübeck, and its central role, before discussing the demise of the league.
The admission includes the Friary, an adjacent monastery. Here, the end of the league combines with walking through the restored monastery. It has big rooms with Gothic ceilings and a few murals. €13, no reduction
Fehmarnbelt Lightship. Built in 1906-8, this 45m-long lightship served at Aussender until 1954, Flensburg and Keil until 1965, and Fehmarbelt until 1982. It was retired and made into a ship museum. Please take a look at the quarters, kitchen, dining area and bridge. €3
Holstentor. The Lübeck City Museum is in the Holsten Gate, the most crucial town gate in the medieval walls of Lübeck. Built between 1464 and 1478, it was reconstructed in 1863, 1933, and 2004-2006 and now sits in the middle of two lanes of road. Above the archway is the inscription “Concordia Domi Foris Pax (Harmony Within, Peace Without). It has two towers, with the south one having a significant lean.
The museum discusses Lübeck’s significant role as a Hanseatic city, featuring a gate with armour and weapons, a model of Lübeck from the 17th century, and the market. Additionally, it highlights the legal system based on Lübeck law, which was adopted by many cities. €7, no reduction
Willy-Brandt-Haus. Born Herbert Frahm in 1913 in Lübeck, he never knew his father and was raised by his grandfather. His ideology was that of a social democrat even as a teenager, and he graduated from high school in 1932. In 1933, on the eve of Hitler’s ascension to power, he went into exile in Oslo, where he changed his name to Willi Brandt and worked as a journalist. He eventually obtained Norwegian citizenship and a Norwegian passport. In 1940, when the Nazis invaded Norway, he flew to Stockholm, where he worked as a press officer for Norway. In May 1945, he was a reporter at the Nuremberg trials for Scandinavian newspapers. Retaining his Norwegian citizenship, he returned to Berlin, where he worked as a press attaché for the Norwegian military. Always active in socialist affairs, he became the mayor of West Berlin in 1957, witnessing the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and subsequently negotiating with the GDR. In both 1961 and 1965, he lost in bids to become the Chancellor of West Germany, but was finally elected in 1969. He was very popular for gaining many social rights, including lowering the voting age to 18, securing the vote and equal rights for women, and championing democratic ideals. However, he was criticized by the right for living in a common-law marriage and for his period of exile. In 1971, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
When one of his aides was exposed as an East German spy, he resigned in 1974 and was replaced by Helmut Schmidt, who remained chancellor until 1982. His main projects were enlarging the European community, unifying East and West Germany (finally realized on October 3, 1990), curbing the arms race, and promoting peace throughout the world. He died in 1992.
This is a very well-done museum with short, concise labels (English versions are significantly shorter than the German ones). Free
St. Anne’s Museum Quarter
On a hot Sunday night, I left Lübeck at 18:10 on my way to Hamburg on Highway 1, a busy 6-lane divided highway. Hamburg is only 65 km south of Lübeck. The traffic was terrible, rarely exceeding 20 km/h. North of Lübeck lies the Baltic coast, full of beaches and resorts, where Germans return home after a weekend or longer.
I finally pulled over on the freeway, read, ate and wrote this.
After over two hours, the traffic was no better, but the police had arrived, having received several phone calls about a vehicle that was pulled over. I moved on to a service center down the highway.
HANSEATIC LEAGUE
This was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Northwestern and Central Europe. Originating from a few North German towns in the late 1100s, the league went on to dominate Baltic maritime trade for three centuries along the coasts of Northern Europe. Hansa territories stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages, and they gradually diminished after 1450.
Hanse, later spelled as Hansa, wThe Old High German word for a convoy was applied to bands of merchants travelling between the Hanseatic cities, whther by land or by sea.
Merchant circles established the league to protect the guilds’ economic interests and diplomatic privileges in their affiliated cities and countries, as well as along the trade routes which the merchants used. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system and operated their armies for mutual protection and aid. Despite this, the organization was neither a state nor a confederation of city-states; only a minimal number of the cities within the league enjoyed autonomy and liberties comparable to those of a free imperial city.
History.
Exploratory trading adventures, raids, and piracy had occurred early throughout the Baltic region; the sailors of Gotland sailed up rivers as far away as Novgorod. International trade in the Baltic area before the emergence of the Hanseatic League was led by Scandinavians, who established major trading hubs at Birka, Haithabu, and Schleswig by the 9th century. The later Hanseatic ports stretching from Mecklenburg to Kaliningrad were originally part of the Scandinavian-led Baltic trade.
Historians generally trace the origins of the Hanseatic League to the rebuilding of the north German town of Lübeck in 1159. German cities achieved domination of trade in the Baltic with striking speed during the 13th century, and Lübeck became a central node in the seaborne trade that linked the areas around the North and Baltic seas. The hegemony of Lübeck reached its peak during the 15th century.
Lübeck became a base for merchants from Saxony and Westphalia, who traded eastward and northward. Well before the term “Hanse” appeared in a document in 1267, merchants in different cities began to form guilds, or Hansa, with the intention of trading with towns overseas, especially in the economically less developed eastern Baltic. This area was a source of timber, wax, amber, resins, and furs, along with rye and wheat brought down on barges from the hinterland to port markets. The towns raised their armies, with each guild required to provide levies when needed. The Hanseatic cities came to the aid of one another, and commercial ships were often used to transport soldiers and their equipment.
Visby functioned as the leading center in the Baltic before the Hanseatic League. Sailing east, Visby merchants established a trading post at Novgorod called Gutagard (also known as Gotenhof) in 1080. Merchants from northern Germany also stayed in the early period of the Gotlander settlement. Later, they established their trading station in Novgorod, known as Peterhof, which was further upriver, in the first half of the 13th century. In 1229, German merchants at Novgorod were granted certain privileges that enhanced their security.
Hansa societies worked to remove trade restrictions for their members. In 1241, Lübeck, which had access to the fishing grounds of the Baltic and North Seas, allied—a precursor to the league—with Hamburg, another trading city, that controlled access to salt-trade routes from Lüneburg. The allied cities gained control over most of the salt-fish trade, especially the Scania Market; Cologne joined them in the Diet of 1260. In 1266, Henry III of England granted the Lübeck and Hamburg Hansa a charter for operations in England, and the Cologne Hansa joined them in 1282 to form the most powerful Hanseatic colony in London. Much of the drive for this co-operation came from the fragmented nature of existing territorial governments, which failed to provide security for trade. Over the next 50 years, the Hansa itself emerged with formal agreements for confederation and co-operation covering the west and east trade routes. The principal city and linchpin remained Lübeck; with the first general diet of the Hanseatic League held there in 1356, the Hanseatic League acquired an official structure.
Lübeck’s location on the Baltic provided access for trade with Scandinavia and Kievan Rus’, with its sea trade center Veliky Novgorod, putting it in direct competition with the Scandinavians who had previously controlled most of the Baltic trade routes. A treaty with the Hanseatic League, not the Visby Hansa, put an end to this competition: through this treaty, the Lübeck merchants gained access to the inland Russian port of Novgorod, where they built a trading post, or Kontor (literally: “office”). Although such alliances formed throughout the Holy Roman Empire, the league never bdeveloped into a closely managed, frmal organization. Assemblies of the Hanseatic towns met irregularly in Lübeck for a Hansetag (Hanseatic diet) from 1356 onwards. Still, many cities chose not to attend or send representatives, and decisions were not binding on individual cities. Over the period, a network of alliances grew to include a flexible roster of 70 to 170 cities.
The league succeeded in establishing additional Kontors in Bruges (Flanders), Bergen (Norway), and London (England). These trading posts became significant enclaves. The London Kontor, established in 1320, stood west of London Bridge near Upper Thames Street, the site now occupied by Cannon Street station. It evolved into a substantial walled community, featuring warehouses, a weighhouse, a church, offices, and houses, reflecting the importance and scale of the trading activity on the premises.
Starting with trade in coarse woollen fabrics, the Hanseatic League had the effect of bringing both commerce and industry to northern Germany. As trade increased, newer and finer woollen and linen fabrics, ans well as ilks, were manufactured in northern Germany. The same refinement of products occurred in other cottage industries, such as etching, wood carving, armour production, metal engraving, and wood-turning. The century-long monopolization of sea navigation and trade by the Hanseatic League ensured that the Renaissance arrived in northern Germany long before the rest of Europe.
In addition to the major Kontors, individual Hanseatic ports had a representative merchant and warehouse. In England, this occurred in Boston, Bristol, King’s Lynn (formerly Bishop’s Lynn, which features the sole remaining Hanseatic warehouse in England), Hull, Ipswich, Norwich, Great Yarmouth (formerly Yarmouth), and York.
The league primarily traded timber, furs, resin (or tar), flax, honey, wheat, and rye from the east to Flanders and England, with cloth (and, increasingly, manufactured goods) going in the other direction. Metal ore (principally copper and iron) and herring came south from Sweden.
German colonists in the 12th and 13th centuries settled in numerous cities on and near the east Baltic coast, such as Elbing (Elbląg), Thorn (Toruń), Reval (Tallinn), Riga, and Dorpat (Tartu), which became members of the Hanseatic League, and some of which still retain many Hansa buildings and bear the style of their Hanseatic days. Most were granted Lübeck law (Lübisches Recht), after the league’s most prominent town. The law provided that they had to appeal in all legal matters to Lübeck’s city council. The Livonian Confederation incorporated modern-day Estonia and parts of Latvia, and it had its Hanseatic parliament (diet); all of its major towns became members of the Hanseatic League. The dominant language of trade was Middle Low German. This dialect had a significant impact on countries involved in the trade, particularly the larger Scandinavian languages, as well as Estonian and Latvian.
The league had a fluid structure, but its members shared specific characteristics; most of the Hansa cities either originated as independent cities or gained independence through the collective bargaining power of the league, although such independence remained limited. The Hanseatic free cities owed allegiance directly to the Holy Roman Emperor, without any intermediate family ties or obligations to the local nobility.
Another similarity involved the cities’ strategic locations along trade routes. At the height of its power in the late 14th century, the merchants of the Hanseatic League successfully leveraged their economic influence and, on occasion, their military might—trade routes required protection, and the league’s ships sailed well-armed—to shape imperial policy.
The league also wielded power abroad. Between 1361 and 1370, it waged war against Denmark. Initially unsuccessful, Hanseatic towns in 1368 allied in the Confederation of Cologne, sacked Copenhagen and Helsingborg, and forced Valdemar IV, King of Denmark, and his son-in-law Haakon VI, King of Norway, to grant the league 15% of the profits from Danish trade in the subsequent peace treaty of Stralsund in 1370, thus gaining an effective trade and economic monopoly in Scandinavia. This favourable treaty marked the height of Hanseatic power.
The Hansa also waged a vigorous campaign against pirates. Between 1392 and 1440, maritime trade of the league faced danger from raids of the Victual Brothers and their descendants, privateers hired in 1392 by Albert of Mecklenburg, King of Sweden, against Margaret I, Queen of Denmark. During the Dutch–Hanseatic War (1438–41), the merchants of Amsterdam sought and eventually secured unrestricted access to the Baltic, thereby breaking the Hanseatic monopoly. As an essential part of protecting their investment in the ships and their cargoes, the League trained pilots and erected lighthouses.
Most foreign cities confined the Hanseatic traders to certain trading areas and their trading posts. They seldom interacted with the local inhabitants, except when doing business. Many locals, merchants and nobles alike envied the power of the league and tried to diminish it. For example, in London, the local merchants exerted continuing pressure for the revocation of privileges. The Hansa’s refusal to offer reciprocal arrangements to their English counterparts exacerbated the tension. King Edward IV of England reconfirmed the league’s privileges in the Treaty of Utrecht (1474) despite the latent hostility, in part thanks to the significant financial contribution the league made to the Yorkist side during the Wars of the Roses. In 1597, Queen Elizabeth I of England expelled the league from London, and the Steelyard closed the following year. Ivan III of Russia closed the Hanseatic Kontor at Novgorod in 1494. The very existence of the league, along with its privileges and monopolies, created economic and social tensions that often spilled over into rivalries between league members.
The economic crises of the late 15th century did not spare the Hansa. Nevertheless, its eventual rivals emerged in the form of the territorial states, whether new or revived, and not just in the West. Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow, ended the entrepreneurial independence of the Hanseatic Novgorod Kontor in 1478; it closed completely and finally in 1494. New vehicles of credit were imported from Italy, where double-entry book-keping was invented in 1494. They opposed the Hansa economy, in which silver coins changed hands rather than bills of exchange.
In the 15th century, tensions between the Prussian region and the “Wendish” cities (Lübeck and its eastern neighbours) increased. Lübeck was dependent on its role as the centre of the Hansa, being on the shore of the sea without a major river. It was located at the entrance to the land route to Hamburg, but this land route could be bypassed by sea travel around Denmark and through the Kattegat. Prussia’s primary interest, on the other hand, was the export of bulk products, such as grain and timber, which were crucial for England, the Low Countries, and later on, also for Spain and Italy.
The lack of customs borders on the River Vistula after 1466 helped to gradually increase Polish grain exports, transported to the sea down the Vistula, from 10,000 short tons (9,100 t) per year in the late 15th century to over 200,000 short tons (180,000 t) in the 17th century.[22] The Hansa-dominated maritime grain trade made Poland one of the main areas of its activity, helping Danzig to become the Hansa’s largest city.
A significant economic advantage for the Hansa was its control of the shipbuilding market, mainly in Lübeck and Danzig. The Hansa sold ships everywhere in Europe, including Italy. They drove out the Dutch because Holland wanted to favour Bruges as a huge staple market at the end of a trade route. When the Dutch began to compete with the Hanseatic League in shipbuilding, the Hanseatic League attempted to halt the transfer of shipbuilding technology from Hanseatic towns to Holland. Danzig, a trading partner of Amsterdam, attempted to forestall the decision. Dutch ships sailed to Danzig to collect grain directly from the city, to the dismay of Lübeck. Hollanders also circumvented the Hanseatic towns by trading directly with North German princes in the non-Hanseatic cities. Dutch freight costs were much lower than those of the Hansa, and the Hansa were excluded as middlemen.
When Bruges, Antwerp, and Holland all became part of the Duchy of Burgundy, they actively sought to take over the Hanseatic League’s monopoly on trade. As a result, the staples market in Bruges was transferred to Amsterdam. The Dutch merchants aggressively challenged the Hanseatic League and met with considerable success. Hanseatic cities in Prussia and Livonia supported the Dutch against the core cities of the Hansa in northern Germany. Following several naval wars between Burgundy and the Hanseatic fleets, Amsterdam emerged as the leading port for Polish and Baltic grain from the late 15th century onwards. The Dutch regarded Amsterdam’s grain trade as the mother of all trades (Moedernegotie).
Nuremberg in Franconia developed an overland route to sell formerly Hansa-monopolized products from Frankfurt via Nuremberg and Leipzig to Poland and Russia, trading Flemish cloth and French wine in exchange for grain and furs from the east. The Hansa profited from the Nuremberg trade by allowing Nurembergers to settle in Hanseatic towns, which the Franconians exploited by taking over trade with Sweden as well. The Nuremberg merchant Albrecht Moldenhauer was influential in developing trade with Sweden and Norway. His sons, Wolf Moldenhauer and Burghard Moldenhauer, established themselves in Bergen and Stockholm, becoming leaders of the local Hanseatic activities.
End of the Hansa. At the beginning of the 16th century, the league found itself in a weaker position than it had been in for many years. The rising Swedish Empire had taken control of much of the Baltic Sea. Denmark had regained control over its trade, the Kontor in Novgorod had closed, and the Kontor in Bruges had become effectively moribund. The individual cities that made up the league had also begun to prioritize their interests over the common Hanseatic interests. Finally, the political authority of the German princes started to grow, constraining the independence of merchants and Hanseatic towns.
The league attempted to address some of these issues by creating the post of Syndic in 1556. It elected Heinrich Sudermann as a permanent official with legal training, who worked to protect and extend the diplomatic agreements of the member towns. In 1557 and 1579, revised agreements spelled out the duties of towns, and some progress was made. The Bruges Kontor relocated to Antwerp, and the Hansa sought to establish new routes. However, the league proved unable to prevent the growing mercantile competition, and so a long decline commenced. The Antwerp Kontor closed in 1593, followed by the London Kontor in 1598. The Bergen Kontor continued until 1754; of all the Kontore, only its buildings, the Bryggen, survive.
By the late 17th century, the league had imploded and could no longer deal with its internal struggles. The social and political changes that accompanied the Protestant Reformation included the rise of Dutch and English merchants, as well as the pressure exerted by the Ottoman Empire on the Holy Roman Empire and its trade routes. Only nine members attended the last formal meeting in 1669, and only three (Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen) remained as members until its demise in 1862, in the wake of the creation of the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm I. Hence, only Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen retain the words “Hanseatic City” in their official German titles.
