The Early Hanses 27
tradition of trade.47 Greater legal security for Lower German merchants, a
shorter route to the Baltic Sea in comparison with the route via Schleswig
for western Westphalian and Lower Saxon merchants, and direct access to
salt and herring served as the foundation for the rise of Lübeck. As for the
land connection to Hamburg, which would later become so important to the
Hanseatic trade, it seems only to have become economically significant during
the first decades of the thirteenth century after both cities succeeded in secur-
ing increasingly bigger shares of the traffic that had previously taken place via
Schleswig and the sea.48
As early as 1143, Lübeck had become a center for transshipment of herring
and salt. In addition, Lübeck served as a hub for the sea to land and land to
sea transport of Baltic trade goods headed to the south and southwest. Many
of the merchants interested in the Baltic trade and the herring catch, who
until then had been residents of Bardowiek, relocated to the better-situated
city of Lübeck. Due to a decrease in his revenues from Bardowiek, Henry the
Lion then intervened to take possession of Lübeck. In 1159, he had the recently
burned city rebuilt. The rise of Lübeck only coincided with the rule of the
Saxon duke, but its increasing importance made Henry the Lion interested in
the new city in the first place. However, the city’s ascent was very slow, primar-
ily because the Low German merchants lacked ships! In response, the mer-
chants of Lübeck reacted to this situation in 1159 when they requested that
their new overlord, Henry the Lion, “send messengers into the main towns
and kingdoms of the North, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Russia, and [.. .]
[offer] them peace [and] access to free trade in his city, Lübeck.”49 Among
other things, this meant an exemption from duties for the Russians, Normans,
47 Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, “Neue Aspekte zur Geschichte Lübecks: von der Jahrtausendwende
bis zum Ende der Hansezeit. Die Lübecker Stadtgeschichtsforschung der letzten zehn
Jahre (1988–1997). Teil 1: bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts,” zvlga 78 (1998), 47–114,
61–65; Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, “Die Anfänge Lübecks: Von der abotritischen Landnahme
bis zur Eingliederung in die Grafschaft Holstein-Stormarn,” in Antjekathrin Graßmann,
ed., Lübeckische Geschichte, 4th ed., (Lübeck: Verlag Schmidt-Römhild, 2008), 38–45.
48 Carsten Jahnke, “Handelsstrukturen im Ostseeraum im 12. und beginnenden 13.
Jahrhundert. Ansätze einer Neubewertung,” Hansische Geschichsblätter 126 (2008),
167–168. Carsten Jahnke, “The City of Lübeck and the Internationality of Early Hanseatic
Trade,” in JustynaWubs-Mrozewicz and Stuart Jenks, eds., The Hanse in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe (The Northern World. North Europe and the Baltic c. 400–1700 a.h.
Peoples, Economies and Cultures, Vol. 60). (Leiden: Brill 2013), 37–58.—Single mer-
chants from Lübecker, of course, appeared earlier already, like 1187 in Hamburg-Neustadt,
Arnoldi, Chronica, Slavorum iii, c. 20, 110.
49 Helmold, Slawenchronik, c. 86.