A Companion to the Hanseatic League

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238 Jahnke


many other types of cloth than the western styles and some linen production.
So it is legitimate to mention this trade too, even if most of the research is
missing.
Almost every city in the Baltic sheltered weavers, woolen or linen weavers
and other kinds of cloth-producing industries. These cloth-makers produced
primarily for the regional market but additionally made cloth meant for inter-
regional export. For example, the Prussian weavers were known in Danzig,
Kulm, Marienburg and Elbing,196 or the weavers in Brunswik and Gottingen.197
Like the Flemish, these weavers marked their products with a lead seal, a seal
that was so important that it was falsified by other Polish towns. Beside Prussia,
the cities of Breslau, Schweidnitz/Świdnica and Beitsch/Biecz in Silasia and
Cracow were centers of cloth making,198 as were the Brandenburgian cities
from Kyritz to Osterburg and Berlin.199 The cloth production of the Wendian
and Saxonian quarter of the Hanseatic League is also known.200
From all these cities cloth was exported not only to the nearer lands, but
also to the whole Hanseatic region, and even to Russia and Hungary. The value
of this trade is likewise unknown as is the significance of this product com-
pared to the Flemish and English imports.


196 Jerzy Maik, “Stand und Notwendigkeit der Forschungen über die mittelalterliche
Wollweberei auf dem südlichen Ostseegebiet.” In Northern Archaeological Textiles, nesat
vii, Textile Symposium in Edinburgh, 5th–7th May, ed. Frances Pritchard and John Peter
Wild (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005), 84–92; Rudolf Holbach, “Zur Handelsbedeutung
von Wolltuchen aus dem Hanseraum.” In Der hansische Sonderweg? Beiträge zur Sozial-
und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Hanse, ed. Stuart Jenks and Michael North, Quellen und
Darstellungen zur hansischen Geschichte, N.F., Band xxxix (Cologne: Böhlau, 1993),
135–190; Jerzy Maik, Sukiennictwa Elbląskie w Średniowieczu (Łódź: Polska Akademia
Nauk, 1997); Acta Archaeologica Lodiziensia, Nr. 41; Bruno Widera, “Tucherzeugung
und Tucheinfuhr Polens und der Rus vom 10.–13. Jahrhundert im Lichte technolo-
gischer Untersuchungen. Materialien aus Danzig und Novgorod,” Zeitschrift für
Geschichtswissenschaft 9 (1961), 944–948; Th. Hirsch, Handelsgeschichte, 329.
197 A. Huang, Die Textilien, 301–310.
198 Jerzy Wyromzumski, “The textile trade of Poland in the Middle Ages.” In Cloth and Clothing
in Medieval Europe. Essays in memory of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed. N.B. Harte and
K.G. Ponting (London: Heinemann and The Pasold Research Fund, 1983), 249–258.
199 R. Holbach, “Zur Handelsbedeutung”, 170ff; Herbert Helbig, Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft
der Mark Brandenburg im Mittelalter, Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission
zu Berlin vol. 41 (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1973), 143f.
200 A. Huang, Die Textilien, 301–310.

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