A Companion to the Hanseatic League

204 Jahnke

In that climate and under that condition most of the important works on
the Baltic trade emerged. Around 1900, Dietrich Schäfer led one of the most
important scientific schools in the field of Hanse studies. His books “Die
deutsche Hanse”21 and “Das Buch des lübeckischen Vogts auf Schonen”22 set
the pattern for future generations. This scientific tradition and the idea of
German and Hanseatic dominance continued until 1945. All leading works like
Goetz’ “Deutsch-russische Handelsgeschichte”23 or of E.R. Daenell, F. Rörig
and A.V. Brandt and their schools, who were very productive in the 1930s and
later on, stood more or less on Schäfer’s shoulders. The predominant interpre-
tation was formulated by Fritz Rörig in 1932 and reprinted in 1955:

The deeper sense of the development of the urban landscape in the

Baltic Sea Area [was given by the Hanseatic League.] The whole existed

earlier than the parts. The development of the proud Hanseatic cities in

the Baltic Sea Area [.. .] was not a whim of fate, but was the consequence

of a willful economic program: the economic dominance of the Baltic Sea

by German merchants.24

This concept contained no space for alternate interpretations and certainly
also no space to correspond and hold discussions with foreign colleagues from
equally proud nations. Therefore, German researchers of the 1950s engaged
in a feud with their colleagues from Denmark, such as Aksel E. Christensen,
or Sweden, in the case of Erik Lönnroth, which meant that there could not
be fruitful dialogue for a long time.25 Aksel E. Christensen’s attempt to create
a new definition of the Baltic trade,26 for example, had no impact in Hanse
research of the next few decades.
Another problem from the 1950s up to the 1990s was the outcome of the
Second World War. Some important archives, like the Lubeckian, were spread

21 Dietrich Schäfer, Die Deutsche Hanse (Bielefeld, 1903).
22 Dietrich Schäfer, Das Buch des lübeckischen Vogts auf Schonen, Hansische
Geschichtsquellen, N.F. Vol. iv (Lübeck2: Hansischer Geschichtsverein, 1927).
23 Leopold Goetz, Deutsch-russische Handelsgeschichte des Mittelalters (Lübeck: Waelde,
1922).
24 Fritz Rörig, Die europäische Stadt und die Kultur des Bürgertums im Mittelalter, ed. Louise
Rörig (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1955), 19f.
25 Lennart Bohman, “Hanseväldet ur nordisk synvinkel.” Gotländskt arkiv xxx (1958),
39–52.
26 Aksel E. Christensen, “La Foire de Scanie.” In: Danmark, Norden og Østersøen, Udvalgte
Afhandlinger (Copenhagen: Dansk historisk forening, 1976), 98–117.