78 Sarnowsky
brothers soon renewed their attacks on Hanseatic ships, partly also backed
by the counts of Oldenburg, and remained influential at least during the first
third of the fifteenth century while Hamburg tried in vain to control them
by building up its own territory in Eastern Frisia. Piracy was a threat to trade
everywhere, especially when it was used as an instrument of naval warfare.
In the aftermath of the peace of Stralsund, the Hanseatic League remained
an important factor in Northern politics, but it was far from controlling the
events. Rather, the kings and princes were able to consolidate their power, not
only in the North but also in the West and even in the East of Europe.
New Conflicts in East and West
Soon after the Hanseatic League had given back the fortresses at the Øresund
to Margaret of Denmark, in 1385, new conflicts arose in the most important
trading centers in East and West, in the relations with Novgorod, Flanders,
and England. Contrary to the time before 1350, the Hanseatic League now
had a well-established system to discuss and put through effective measures
against potential threats for its privileges, even including military operations.
Nevertheless, the forms of co-operation depended always from the actual sit-
uation, as there was no clear leading role. Though Lübeck was the place of
many Hansetage and issued letters on behalf of the towns even in between the
assemblies, its role as a ‘capital’ was sometimes contended by Cologne, as the
grand master of the Teutonic Knights played an important role for the negotia-
tions with the Western European rulers which made him appear—not only
in English sources of the fourteenth century—the actual ‘head of the Hanse’
(caput Hansae).56
This had also some relevance for the relations with the trading post
in Novgorod, which were increasingly dominated by the Livonian towns.57
PhD diss. (Hamburg, 2012); more traditionally: Störtebeker 600 Jahre nach seinem Tod, ed.
Wilfried Ehbrecht, Hansische Studien, vol. 15 (Trier: Porta Alba, 2005); Gottes Freund—
aller Welt Feind: von Seeraub und Konvoifahrt. Störtebeker und die Folgen, ed. Jörgen
Bracker (Hamburg: Zertani, 2001).
56 Hammel-Kiesow, Hanse, 78; Pitz, Bürgereinung, 343–65; Stuart Jenks, “A Capital without a
State: Lübeck caput tocius hanze (to 1474),” Historical Research 65 (1992), 134–149; Heinz
Stoob, “Lübeck als ‘Caput Omnium’ in der Hanse.” Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte
121 (1985), 157–68.
57 For the Kontor in general see Novgorod. Markt und Kontor der Hanse, ed. Norbert
Angermann, Klaus Friedland, Quellen und Darstellungen zur hansischen Geschichte N.F.
53 (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna, 2002).