The Baltic Trade 203
the Baltic area to be more a contact zone than a zone of productivity, even
if the earnings of Hanseatic merchants were at least as high as those of their
Italian or South German counterparts.17
Research on the Baltic Trade: Mainstreams, Controversies,
Problems and New Directions
The history of the Baltic trade has been a focus of interest since the nineteenth
century. But the historical circumstances and the different fashions in histo-
riographies created some special points of view and many problems that still
appear today.
The beginning of historical research into the Baltic trade had its ori-
gin in the national-romantic movement in Northern Europe. The return to
national histories and the growing interest in archives and historical monu-
ments established the basis for our current knowledge. Many of the main
collections of sources (“Urkundenbücher”) were found in this period, like the
Lübeckische Urkundenbuch in 1843, the Mecklenburgische Urkundenbuch in
1863, the Preußische Urkundenbuch in 1882, the Liv-, Esth- und Kurländische
Urkundenbuch in 1853 or the Danske Magazin in 1745/1843. At the same time the
first standard opera dedicated to the history of trade in the Baltic, like Theodor
Hirschs “Handels- und Gewerbegeschichte Danzigs unter der Herrschaft des
Deutschen Ordens” from 185818 or Dietrich Schäfers “Die Hansestädte und König
Waldemar von Dänemark” from 1876,19 emerged. After the German wars of 1864
and 1870/71 historical research came under the strong influence of nationalistic
tendencies and political propaganda. The history of the Hanse, and primarily
the “pride history” of Lübeck and Danzig, provided the justification for the new
German armament at sea: The proud German merchant, overruling all compe-
tition from north, east and west was the historical archetype for the new genera-
tion of Germans and the new German position in the nationalistic world.20
17 Carsten Jahnke, Geld, Geschäfte, Informationen. Der Aufbau hansischer Handels-
gesellschaften und ihre Verdienstmöglichkeiten, Handel, Geld und Politik, vol. 10
(Lübeck: Schmidt Römhild, 2007); Carsten Jahnke, Netzwerke in Handel und
Kommunikation.
18 Th. Hirsch, “Handels- und Gewerbegeschichte.”
19 Dietrich Schäfer, Die Hansestädte und König Waldemar von Dänemark ( Jena, 1879).
20 Thomas Hill, “Vom öffentlichen Gebrauch der Hansegeschichte und Hanseforschung
im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.” In Ausklang und Nachklang der Hanse, ed. Antjekathrin
Graßmann, Hansische Studien, xii (Trier: Porta Alba, 2001), 67–88.