Part 1211

"Under cities we are to understand fortified places in the enjoyment of market-jurisdiction (marktrecht), immunity and corporate self-government. The German as well as the French cities are a creation of the Middle Ages. They were unknown to the Frankish as well as to the old Germanic public law; there was no organic connection with the Roman town-system. … All cities were in the first place markets; only in market-jurisdiction are we to seek the starting point for civic jurisdiction. The market-cross, the same emblem which already in the Frankish period signified the market-peace imposed under penalty of the king's ban, became in the Middle Ages the emblem of the cities. … After the 12th century we find it to be the custom in most German and many French cities to erect a monumental town-cross in the market-place or at different points on the city boundary. Since the 14th century the place of this was often taken in North-German cities by the so-called Roland-images. … All those market-places gradually became cities in which, in addition to yearly markets, weekly markets and finally daily markets were held. Here there was need of coins and of scales, of permanent fortifications for the protection of the market-peace and the objects of value which were collected together; here merchants settled permanently in growing numbers, the Jews among them especially forming an important element. Corporative associations of the merchants resulted, and especially were civic and market tribunals established. … From the beginning such a thing as free cities, which were entirely their own masters, had not existed. Each city had its lord; who he was depended on to whom the land belonged on which they stood. If it belonged to the empire or was under the administration (vogtei) of the empire the city was a royal or imperial one. The oldest of these were the Pfalz-cities (Pfalzstädte) which had developed from the king's places of residence (Königspfälze). … Beginning with the 12th century and in course of the 13th century all cities came to have such an organ [i. e. a body of representatives] called the Stadtrath (consilium, consules) with one or more burgomasters (magistri civium) at their head. Herewith did the city first become a public corporation, a city in the legal sense. … Of the royal cities many since the time of Frederick II had lost their direct dependence on the empire (Reichsunmittelbarkeit) and had become territorial or provincial cities, through having been sold or pledged by the imperial government. As soon as the view had gained ground that the king had no right to make such dispositions and thus to disregard the privileges that had been granted to the cities, people spoke no longer of royal cities but of cities of the empire. These had, all of them, in course of time, even where the chief jurisdiction remained in the hand of an imperial official, attained a degree of independence approximating to the territorial supremacy of the princes. They had their special courts as corporations before the king. Since the second half of the 13th century they rejoiced in an autonomy modified only by the laws of the realm; they had the disposal of their own armed contingents and the sole right of placing garrisons in their fortresses. They had accordingly also the right of making leagues and carrying on feuds, the right to lordless lands (Heimfallsrecht) … and other prerogatives. The cities of the empire often ruled at the same time over extensive territories. … {3763} Among the cities of the empire were comprised after the 14th century also various cities of bishoprics which had been able to protect themselves from subjection to the territorial power of the bishop, and which only stood to it in a more or less loose degree of subordination. … For the majority of the cities of bishoprics which later became cities of the empire the denomination 'Free Cities' came up in the 14th century (not till later 'Free Cities of the Empire'). … Among the leagues of cities, which especially contributed to raise their prestige and paved the way to their becoming Estates of the Empire or of the principalities, the great Rhenish civic confederation (1254-1256) lasted too short a time to have an enduring effect. The Swabian civic league was for purely political purposes—the maintenance of the direct dependence on the empire (Reichsunmittelbarkeit) against the claims of territorial sovereignty of the princes, and its unfortunate ending served rather to deteriorate than to improve the condition of the cities. It was different with the Hansa. This name, which signified nothing else than gild or brotherhood, was first applied to the gild of the German merchants in the 'stahlhof' in London. This gild, having originated from the amalgamation of various national Houses of German merchants in England, had finally, under the name of 'Hansa of Germany' or 'Gildhall of the Germans in England,' come to comprise all Germans who carried on trade with England. Similar associations of the German merchants were the 'German House' in Venice, the 'German Counting-house' in Bruges and the German Hansas in Wisby on Gotland, in Schonen, Bergen, Riga and Novgorod. The chief purpose of these Hansas was the procuring of a 'House' as a shelter for persons and for wares, the maintaining of peace among, the Hansa brothers, legal protection, the acquisition of commercial privileges, etc. The Hansas were gilds with several elected aldermen at their heads who represented them in external matters and who administered the property. … Quarrels among the brothers might not, under penalty, be brought before external tribunals; they were to be brought before the Hansa committee as a gild-tribunal. This committee had also an extended penal jurisdiction over the members; under certain circumstances they had even the power of life and death in their hands. An especially effective punishment was the Hansa Bann, which occasioned, besides expulsion from the Hansa, a complete boycott on the part of the Hansa brothers. … The community of interests thus founded among these cities led repeatedly, already as early as the second half of the 13th century, to common steps on their part; so that in Hansa affairs a tacit league existed, even although it had not been expressly sanctioned. After this had become more clearly apparent in the troubles with Flanders (1356-1358) the name Hansa was also applied to this league-relationship, so that henceforward besides the Hansa of the German merchants there existed a Hansa of the German cities. The Hanseatic League received a firm organization through the Greifswald and Cologne confederations of 1361 and 1367, both of which were at first only entered into for a single warlike undertaking (against Waldemar of Denmark), but which were then repeatedly renewed and finally looked upon as a permanent league. The Hanseatic League … came forward in external matters, even in international relationships, as an independent legal entity. It carried on war and entered into treaties with foreign nations; it had a league army at its disposal and a league fleet; it acquired whole territorial districts and saw to the building of fortresses. In itself it was not a defensive and offensive league; it did not concern itself with the feuds of single cities with outsiders. The sphere of activity of the league was essentially confined to the province of commerce: protection of commerce, … the closing of commercial treaties, etc. … The head of the League was and continued to be Lubeck. Its kernel, as it were, was formed by the Wendish (i. e. Mecklenburg and Pomeranian) cities which were united under Lubeck. Originally any city of Lower Germany which asked to be taken in was received into the League. … Hansa cities which did not fulfil their federal obligations came under the penalty of the Hansa bann and the general commercial ostracism consequent upon it. … The federal power was exercised by civic diets, which were assemblies of delegates from the members of the council [Rath] of the individual cities. The summons was sent by Lubeck. The decrees were passed in the form of 'recesses.' … Within the League again were narrower leagues with their own common affairs and their own civic diets. After numerous changes the four 'quarters' were recognized as such: the Wendish under Lubeck as its head, the Saxon under Brunswick, the Cologne under Cologne, the Prussian-Livonian under Danzig.

_R. Schröder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (translated from the German), pages 588-609._

See, also, HANSA TOWNS (page 1624), and CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE (page 473).

GERMANY: 15th-17th Centuries. The decay of the Hansa.

"The complete ruin of the empire in the course of the 15th century necessarily entailed at last the ruin also of its members. Nowhere did this elementary truth make itself felt in a more terrible manner than in northeastern Germany, in those colonial districts which in consequence of the extraordinary development of the Hansa had risen in importance to the extent of having an influence on the whole east and northeast of Europe. Here the year 1370 had denoted for the Hansa a climax without a parallel. After a glorious war it had closed with the Danish king, Waldemar Atterdag, a peace which seemed about to keep the northern kingdoms, for a long time to come, under the power of its will. But, soon after, the Lubeck-Hanseatic policy began to degenerate. … The Hansa had looked on without interfering at the struggle which began between the Teutonic Order and Poland. This freed it from the threatening maritime supremacy of the Order; besides this it had just become involved, itself, in conflicts in the North. … A long and tedious war ensued … which ended to the disadvantage of the Hansa. … Within the Hansa, during the struggle, the divergency of interests between the Wendish, Prussian and Livonian cities had for the first time become so pronounced as to amount to complete disunion, and already in 1431 in Hanseatic circles the fear could be expressed … 'that the noble confederation of our Hansa will be dissolved and destroyed.' Such being the case it soon became evident that the struggle with King Erich had actually cost the Hansa the 'Dominium maris Baltici.' {3764} For one thing the English and the Dutch, more and more unopposed, began to carry on in the East a commerce which was hostile to the Hansa. … While the Western enemies of the Hansa thus appeared in districts on the Baltic, which had hitherto been reserved for the Hanseatic merchant, the influence on the North Sea of the Baltic Hansa cities diminished also more and more. It was possible indeed, for some time to come, still to hold on to Norway. But further to the southwest the Hansa ships, in the war which England in union with Burgundy had been waging with France since the year 1415, saw themselves attacked on all sides in spite of the neutral flag. It was well-known that the empire would not protect the German flag. It was worse still that in England a more and more violent opposition arose against the Hanseatic privileges, for the progress of this movement laid bare once and for all the fundamental contrast between the commercial interests in England of the Rhenish Hansa cities and those of the 'Osterlings' [Eastern cities]. If the English were prepared perhaps to further extend the rights of the Hansa in their land in return for the simultaneous free entry of their flag in the Baltic, that was a condition which pleased the German western cities as much as it seemed unacceptable to the Osterlings, Lubeck at their head. The English had succeeded in carrying discord into the enemy's camp. Affairs in Flanders were on a footing equally dangerous to the continued existence of the Hansa as a whole. … Lubeck, in a diet of the year 1466, recommended the members of the Hansa to consider the merchants of Cologne as not belonging to the Hansa when in the lands of the Duke of Burgundy. A complete breach could not now fail to come. It occurred, very unfortunately for Cologne and the western cities, on English territory. In 1468 English ships were plundered in the 'Sund,' at the bidding, as was claimed, of the Hansa. The result was that King Edward IV took prisoner all German merchants who happened to be in England and forbade commercial intercourse with Germany. From this restriction, however, the Cologners were able to free themselves through separate negotiations with the king. It was an inconsiderate step thus to separate themselves from the rest of the Hansa, and that, too, in such a question as this. Cologne stood there fully isolated now even from the western cities. Lubeck at once profited by the occasion to have Cologne placed under the Hansa bann and soon after the Hansa, almost entirely united now except for Cologne, began the war against England. In the year 1472 a great fleet sailed out against the island-kingdom; it had complete success. The peace of Utrecht of February 18th 1474 restored once more the old Hanseatic privileges in England and opened up the prospect of damages amounting to £10,000. Cologne had to submit; in 1478 it returned to the Hansa. But all the same there was no complete restoration of the old unity. The mercantile differences between the west and the east cities not only continued but increased, and a dominion over the Baltic, not to mention the North Sea, was, in spite of the momentary success in England, no longer to be thought of. … After about 1490 the interests also of the Wendish cities including, say, Bremen, Hamburg and Lüneburg, became divided. … Thus towards the end of the 15th century the Hansa bore the stamp of decline in all directions, … the political-mercantile preponderance on land, as well as the 'Dominium maris Baltici,' was broken and the league itself was torn by internal dissensions. In the years from 1476 to 1494 only one common Hansa diet was held; complete ruin was now only a question of time. The 16th century and a part still of the 17th century comprise the period of the slow wasting away of the Hansa. While at the beginning of this period the South German merchant-princes developed a German world-commerce, the satiated mercantile houses of the North showed themselves incapable of progressing even on purely commercial paths. They remained in the ruts of old-fashioned commerce." In England "less and less regard was paid to the warnings and plaints of this antiquated piece of retrogression, until Queen Elisabeth made use of the incautious promulgation of an imperial edict forbidding English merchants to settle in the Hansa cities to simply abrogate the Hanseatic privileges in England. It was the key-stone on the tomb of the Hanseatic relations with England, once so close and full of import."

_K. Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte (translated from the German), volume 4, pages 468-484._

"The unmerciful fate which had overtaken the German nation [the 30 years war], like a storm wind descending upon the land, gave also the death-blow to that proud communal system which when in its prime showed better than any other institution the greatness of the German power in the Middle Ages. He who does not know the history of the Hansa does not know how to estimate the true significance of our people. He does not know that no goal was too distant for it, no task too great; that at the same time it could belong to the first commercial nations of the world and intellectually absorb and work over the idea of humanism, could offer defiance to the kings of the Danes and challenge the pope for usurping the rule of the world. How did things still look on the Thames when in Dantzig, day after day, four or five hundred ships were running in and out, when the merchants of Soest, Dortmund and Osnabrück were opening their counting-houses in the Warangian city of Novgorod? It is in truth nothing new if the German nation today again begins to reckon itself among the naval powers. … In those days it was also the baneful religious schism which hindered the great commercial centres on the German northern coast from making use of the favoring constellations which presented themselves. The evangelical burghers of Lubeck and Rostock could not make up their minds for the sake of advantageous trade connections with Spain to become bailiffs of their brothers of the faith in Holland; they could put no trust in the brilliant promises with which the emperor's Jesuits tried to turn them away from the cause of Denmark and Sweden, and herewith probably the last opportunity was missed of breathing new life in the already aging commercial league. The attempt made in 1641 to renew the league by ten cities remained ineffectual. Lubeck which already in 1629 had lost 96 ships could no longer keep itself from ruin; its great commercial houses became bankrupt and drew down the smaller ones with them in their fall; Dantzig, which still in 1619 had been able to show an export of grain to the amount of 102,981 tons, exported in 1655 only 11,361, and in 1659 not more than 542 tons."

_Zwideneck-Sü-denhorst, Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740 (translated from the German), volume 1, page 50._

{3765}

GERMANY: 16th Century. At the beginning of the Reformation Movement.