104 North
The Upper Germans made themselves increasingly independent from the
Hanseatic League’s commercial mediations with Livonia and Prussia, in that
they took up the direct exchange of goods with these markets. Therefore, the
North-South trade lost considerable importance along the route between
Frankfurt and Lübeck in the sixteenth century because the spice and cop-
per trade was concentrated in Antwerp and the fur trade was concentrated
in Leipzig. For the most part, the Fuggers and their successors shipped the
upper Hungarian copper on the Vistula or down the Oder through Danzig, or
Stettin to Antwerp. Only small quantities went through Hamburg and Lübeck
in the west. Likewise, the trade exchanges of Upper Germany with the East
proceeded more commonly along the overland routes through Breslau and
Leipzig than along the longer route via Lübeck. Only seldom did Nuremberg’s
merchants still buy fish and Eastern wares from Lübeck or deliver plate and
brass wares to Livonia. The commerce of the Upper German intermediary
monopoly in money exchange was influenced little by these geographic exten-
sions of trade. Furthermore, citizens of Nuremberg and Augsburg also con-
ducted transactions for Hamburg and Lübeck, cities which at first gradually
adopted the financial techniques of Upper Germany or the West.
In the Eastern Baltic region, the closure of the Hanseatic branch office in
Novgorad, St. Peter’s House (Peterhofes), also brought an apparent retreat of
trade. After the loss of the Novgorad branch office, Hanseatic commerce had
to seek new routes. The Livonian Hanseatic cities, Riga and more importantly
Reval, whose trade with Lübeck developed dynamically over the course of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, profited from this. Still, political disagree-
ments between Russia and Sweden could also endanger this trade, and the
merchants were forced to reorient themselves multiple times. As a result of
the conquest of Narva by the Russians, Reval was cut off from its Russian hin-
terland. In the short term, the merchants relocated their Russian trade from
Reval to Viborg, and from 1559 on, concentrated on Narva, as this was the offi-
cial Russian location for foreign trade. At the same time, the exports of Riga
took an upswing, in which Lübeck, from ware to ware and to various extents,
took part. While Riga’s exports of flax, hemp, ash, and tar went overwhelm-
ingly through the Øresund to Western Europe, and especially the Netherlands,
Lübeck took over exports of leather, skins, and tallow almost exclusively. The
merchant Wolter von Holstein, for example, drew leather, skins, and flax as
well as tallow and wax from Riga, while he shipped primarily cloth and herring
back.5 Through the expansion of its hinterland into Lithuania and Russia at the
5 Marie-Louise Pelus, Wolter von Holsten marchand Lubeckois dans la seconde moitié du
seizième siècle. Contribution à l’étude des relations commerciales entre Lübeck et les villes