Kontors and Outposts 135
being appointed to an honorable position, it meant that the individual mer-
chant would deal with the huge burden of spending time for administrative
purposes instead of business ones. Special regulations were imposed, like the
rule that no merchant was to be elected twice in a row, to reduce this burden
and spread the duty of running the kontor on as many shoulders as possible.
When written notes, documents, and official letters started to play an impor-
tant role in interregional business and politics in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, the aldermen found it increasingly difficult to fulfill their tasks.
To ease the burdens of the aldermen, a new position was established at the
kontors: the clerk. In London, Bruges, and Bergen, a clerck was appointed in
the middle of the fifteenth century. Only in Novgorod was there no official
clerk. Instead, the priests of the Hansards’ church at the Peterhof took over
most administrative duties.
A clerk’s main function was to assist the aldermen with juridical advice and
maintain the kontor’s official written correspondence. Soon the clerk became
a very important position at the kontors. They had several advantages on their
hands. Since most of them had studied the law at a German university, they
were familiar with the interpretation of law codes, privileges, and the kontors’
statutes. They understood words and writing better than the aldermen, and
they had no difficulties with Latin, which was the most important language
for official correspondence in the Late Middle Ages. Additionally the clercks
served at the kontors for several years. They knew the kontor’s statutes, the his-
tory of certain problems, and the inner structure of the community much bet-
ter than the aldermen, who served for only a year.
Clerks assisted both merchants and hometowns. The clerks sent reports to
the town council or merchant guilds in the towns, reporting important activi-
ties, developments, problems, and difficulties within the kontor. They even
pointed out certain merchant offences against the rules and regulations. This
information was especially important to the merchants’s headmasters or part-
ners, who were not at the kontor and had to rely on second hand information in
cases of embezzlement or fraud. The clerks’ close connection to the merchants
and the hometowns secured them very attractive positions after working at the
kontor. Many clerks can be traced to positions such as secretaries of the town
councils or as priests at altars or churches in Hanseatic towns.
These descriptions make Hanseatic kontors appear to be well-functioning
organizations that started from scratch by a merchant elite with a determined
plan to run a trade base. However, this is not true, as the kontors’ organiza-
tion and legislation developed over a long time, beginning in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. This process did not end until the kontors closed. The
best remaining example of such a development are the seven versions of the