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CHAPTER 2
The ‘Golden Age’ of the Hanseatic League
Jürgen SarnowskyThe ‘Golden Age’: General Introduction
When the Hanseatic League had won its first war against Denmark and con-
cluded the peace treaty of Stralsund in 1370,1 it reached without any doubt the
height of its influence. It controlled the straits between Denmark and what
today is Southern Sweden, its privileges in Scania (Skåne) and Gotland were
renewed, while some years earlier it had maintained and extended its posi-
tion in Flanders. The assemblies of the towns’ representatives, the Hansetage,
had become an effective means of organizing its defence and co-ordinating
measures against threats for the towns’ privileges, and the ‘Confederation of
Cologne’, concluded at the assembly at Cologne in 1367, continued after the
peace as an instrument of even closer co-operation. Its standing was con-
firmed when Emperor Charles iv came to Lübeck in 1375 and addressed the
town council as ‘lords’.2 Not without overstatement, historians have called the
Hanseatic League during this period a ‘great Northern European power’.3
The period around 1370 has generally been recognized as the ‘Golden Age’
or the ‘bloom period’ of the Hanseatic League;4 it may also be conceived of as
the beginning of its history in a proper sense.5 Nevertheless, its situation soon
became increasingly difficult because of the formation of modern states and
increasing competition. It only partly maintained its position in the wars with
Denmark (1427–1435), Holland and Zeeland (1438–1441), and England (1468–
1 See e.g. the articles in Hansische Geschichtsblätter 88 (1970).
2 Die Chroniken der niedersächsischen Städte: Lübeck, vol. 1, Die Chroniken der deutschen
Städte, vol. 19, ed. Karl Koppmann (Leipzig, 1884; repr. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht,
1967), p. 553.
3 “Nordeuropäische Großmacht,” chapter heading in Philippe Dollinger, Die Hanse (Stuttgart:
Kröner, 1989), 89.
4 The latter e.g. as title of the classical study Erich Daenell, Die Blütezeit der deutschen
Hanse, Hansische Geschichte von der zweiten Hälfte des xiv. bis zum letzten Viertel des xv.
Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (1905–06, repr. Berlin, New York: Duncker und Humblot, 1973).
5 As convincingly argued by Carsten Jahnke, “Die Hanse: Überlegungen zur Entwicklung des
Hansebegriffes und der Hanse als Instutition resp. Organisation.” Hansische Geschichtsblätter
131 (2013): 1–32.