62 Hammel-Kiesow
to a single execution for all participants. These joint privileges were also avail-
able in Flanders, but were subject to multiple executions for various recipients.
Until the end of the century, the oft-quoted “Hanseatic” privileges in England
applied only to merchants of the gildhalla in London and co-existed alongside
privileges for individual cities; privileges which continued to exist and were
constantly renewed. Privileges for the individual cities were also the rule in the
Scandinavian Empires and along the south Baltic coast.
One way in which Lübeck influenced Peter’s Court in Novgorod, a city to
which merchants were still sailing in traveling associations, was the great
impact it had on the schra, the rules of Peter’s Court, since the late 13th cen-
tury. In Bergen, a fledgling community of German merchants was ruled by the
Law of Lübeck: a great accomplishment for the people of Lübeck. The same
situation applied to Schonen, where the Baltic cities were granted the Law of
Lübeck as part of their privileges. However, while the Baltic of the early four-
teenth century was, in this regard, dominated by Lübeck,134 the branches in
the West gained an ever-growing measure of independence. In Bruges and
in Flanders, the Low German merchants obtained, among other provisions
included within the First Common Privilege of 1309, the right to assemble,
which right lent additional force to their joint appearance. But the consider-
ably differentiated and firmly established legal system of the West had defi-
nitely hindered the development of a common merchant law similar to that,
which had developed in the “Wild East”. Accordingly, merchants also took to
settling their disputes with reference to the laws of their respective hometown.
For this reason alone, it is reasonable to assume that the influence of Lübeck
could not have been as strong in the Baltic Region.
It is the sign of a progressive institutionalization, that, during the first half
of the fourteenth century, permanent kontor-communities were established
even in the foreign branches of Bruges and Bergen. It is also a sign that the
term dudesche hense (1358), was employed by the common cities in order to
describe themselves. Novgorod had already granted the merchants their right
to assemble, if temporarily limited for respective individual traveling groups,
between the turn of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries.
The master of the guild in Novgorod was also authorized to exercise the high
jurisdiction, which for other “hanseatic” branches was executed by a court in
the host country. In Bergen, the Germans’ right to assemble was ensured by
an affirmation of privileges issued by the king in the year 1343. In Bruges, the
134 This Lübeck-centered interpretation in been increasingly discussed; see Wubs-Mrocewicz
and Jenks, Hanse, passim; Jahnke, Hanse, passim.