66 Sarnowsky
developed as can be seen from a letter of Lübeck to Osnabrück from about the
same time.8 Faced with problems in Flanders, Lübeck invited Osnabrück (and
other towns) to send authorized representatives to an assembly at Lübeck.
While this did not continue into the 1330s or 1340s, it was again the situation
in Flanders that finally led to the institution of the Hansetage as quite regular
assemblies of representatives of towns discussing problems of overall impor-
tance, and coming from at least two regions that included Lübeck, or at least
the Wendish towns.9
The Bruges statutes of 1347 not only fixed an equal representation of the
three ‘thirds’ in Bruges formed by the Wendish and Saxon towns, by Westphalia
and Prussia, by Gotland and Livonia, they were also intended to strengthen the
kontor’s standing towards Bruges.10 Thus, in 1351, when a ship from Greifswald
was robbed by an English pirate who was condemned in Sluys, and when this
was followed by repressions against Hanseatic goods in England, the German
merchants blamed Bruges, demanded more rights in the town, especially con-
cerning the weigh scales, and suggested moving the kontor to Aardenburg or
Antwerp in the case their demands were not met.11 The Wendish and Saxon
towns reacted by consultations and by letters to Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, and
the count of Flanders asking for help concerning the complaints of the mer-
chants. Though the scales were conceded, the tensions remained. As is known
from a later letter asking for formal support for the envoys12 in February 1356,
there was an assembly in Lübeck discussing the situation in Flanders. This was
probably the first Hansetag, though nothing is known about its participants. It
commissioned a group of nine town councillors representing the three ‘thirds’
in the Bruges Kontor, three from Lübeck, Hamburg, and Stralsund, four from
Dortmund, Soest, Thorn, and Elbing, and two from Gotland and Livonia.13
They met in Bruges in June 1356, confirmed the statutes of 1347, and decreed
8 hr i 1, 79.
9 Thus the definition of Volker Henn, “Hansische Tagfahrten in der zweiten Hälfte des
- Jahrhunderts” in Die hansischen Tagfahrten zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit, ed.
Volker Henn, Hansische Studien, vol. 11 (Trier: Porta Alba, 2001), 1–21, at 3.
10 Volker Henn, “Entfaltung im Westen: ‚Hansen‛ auf den niederländischen Märkten,” in Die
Hanse. Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos. 2. Aufl. des Textbands der Hanse-Ausstellung, ed.
Jörgen Bracker, Volker Henn, Rainer Postel (Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild 1998), 50–57, at
56; for Bruges cf. James M. Murray, Bruges: Cradle of Capitalism, 1280–1390 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005).
11 hr i 1, 158–61; Dollinger, Hanse, 89–90.
12 hr i 1, 199 § 3.
13 hr i 1, 200.