34 Hammel-Kiesow
From the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the agricultural and for-
estry products of this hinterland region, including grain, wood, ashes, pitch,
and more, were precisely those provisions and raw materials needed by the
densely populated ‘industrial nations’ of the Late Middle Ages and Early
Modern Times. Such nations included Flanders, Brabant, the northern
Netherlands, and England. Consequently, from the fourteenth century, the
Dutch, Zealanders, and the English had all tried and eventually succeeded in
eliminating the Hanseatic transit trade and purchasing these goods directly
from their respective production areas.
The last chapter in the chronology for the expansion of Low German mer-
chants throughout the Baltic Region was composed in the late thirteenth
century when merchants from Lübeck received transit privileges within the
Kingdom of Poland. In Poland, they followed the Vistula Route and established
connections to Krakow and Hungary, the former well known for its rich copper
deposits (Krakow was later called the copper house of the Hanse). In addition,
connections to Silesia and Bohemia were also established. In Silesia, the mer-
chants were drawn to the gold mines and in Bohemia, commercial relation-
ships promised to deliver wax, tin, and silver. However, the extensive activity
of individuals from Lübeck in the area was more than probably aimed at the
exploitation of the Oriental Route created by the Vistula, Bug and RotreuBen,
by which the merchants of Lübeck hoped to reach the Italian colonies of the
Black Sea. After all, Kiev, which had until that point in time served as the hub
for Oriental goods, had been conquered by the Mongols in 1240 and subse-
quently been removed from the trading system operating between the Orient
and Eastern Central Europe.65 With this penetration, the expansion of the Low
German merchants within the Greater Baltic Region was complete.
Cologne, Flanders, and England
The second locus for the development of the Hanse lay to the West, where
merchants from the City of Cologne played a role similar to that played by the
merchants of Lübeck in the East. Thus, the Hanseatic region may be depicted
as a great imaginary ellipse containing two foci in the cities of Lübeck and
Cologne,66 the latter vicariously representing the entire Lower Rhine with
which the cities of the Ijssel and Zuijdersee were closely connected. Between
65 Roland Gehrke, Die Hanse und Polen, Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen
im europäischen Osten, vol. 2 (Lüneburg: Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1996), 7–51, 19.
66 Stoob, Hanse, 88.