198 Jahnke
cultivation and beginning to produce more and more saleable surpluses in a
wide hinterland of the southern Baltic region. This movement was supported
by the Teutonic Order, which came to Prussia in 1226/1230. The Teutonic Order
not only “founded” new cities, beginning with Kulm (Chełmno) in 1230, and
settled German farmers in its newly conquered lands, but also collected sur-
pluses to exchange for western luxury goods, so it is evident that the Order
had a genuine interest in international trade. Another equalizing factor was
the Christianization of the whole area, beginning in Holstein and Scandinavia
around 850 and slowly spreading eastwards until Lithuania was Christianized
in 1385/86.
Hanseatic trade operated as a stabilizing factor in the development of
German colonization, because of the constant inflow of western culture and
goods and the fact that the Hanseatic language, Lower German, became the
lingua franca of this area.
The trading system which the Hanse established around 1250 was not
static and can be divided into several major phases. In the first phase, from
ca. 1200/1250 until 1370, the western Hanseatic towns, and most importantly
Lübeck, dominated trade in and out of the Baltic. The route between Lübeck
and Hamburg was for the Hanseatic merchants the eye of the needle. Most
goods had to pass through there, so became Lübeck the key of the Baltic trade.
But after the peace of Stralsund and the installation of a Hanseatic govern-
ment at the Scanian markets, the system changed. The Prussian and Dutch
cities developed their own overlapping interests by excluding Lübeck more
and more from their trade, slowly in the fifteenth century and with increasing
intensity in the sixteenth century. Lübeck did not lose its importance for the
Baltic trade, but the city of Danzig became more important and wealthier than
its old sister at the Trave.8 From the beginning of the sixteenth century, Baltic
trade was more affected by the trade between Danzig and Amsterdam than by
the old route between Lübeck and Hamburg, even though this route did not
lose its importance entirely until modern times.9
8 Jahnke, Netzwerke, passim. Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, “Vom Koggen zum RoRo-verkehr. Die
Lübecker Handelsflotte vom Mittelalter bis zum Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts.” In Seefahrt, Schiff
und Schifferbrüder. 600 Jahre Schiffergesellschaft zu Lübeck, 1401–2001, ed. R. Hammel-Kiesow
(Lübeck: Schiffergesellschaft, 2001), 83–90; Pierre Jeannin, “Les relations économiques
des villes de la Baltique avec Anvers au xvie siècle, i.” In Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial- und
Wirtschaftsgeschichte 43 (1956), 193–217, here 193–202.
9 Johannes Schildhauer, “Zur Verlagerung des See- und Handelsverkehrs im nordeuropäischen
Raum während des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, Eine Untersuchung auf der Grundlage der
Danziger Pfahlkammerbücher.” In Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte iv (1968), 187–211;
A. Mączak and H. Samsonowicz, “La zone Baltique,” 75–85, with similar phases.