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Introduction
Donald J. HarreldIn Spring, 1870, the city of Stralsund celebrated the 500-year anniversary of the
“Peace” that bears its name that ended the war between the Hanseatic League
and the Kingdom of Denmark. The Peace of Stralsund is generally considered
to mark the zenith of Hanse commercial power.1 One result of this celebra-
tion was the founding of the Hansische Geschichtsverein, organized to pro-
mote Hanse history and to connect Hanseatic studies to the broader German
historiography.2 Thanks in part to the publication agenda of the Hansische
Geschichtsverein, Hanse studies have flourished since the association’s orga-
nization. The Hansische Geschichtsblätter, the Hanserecesse, the Pfingstblätter,
to name only a few of the series published by the association have provided
generations of scholars an outlet for serious scholarship on the Hanse.
The earliest scholars involved in the Hansische Geschichtsverein were, not
surprisingly, local historians and archivists located in the principal hanseatic
towns of northern Germany. In the early years, most of the works published
in the Hansische Geschichtsblätter slanted heavily toward political and diplo-
matic history topics and were fitted into the emerging nationalist histories of
a newly formed Germany. Of course his trend in historical scholarship was not
unique to German history. Late nineteenth-century national histories included
measurable doses of political propaganda in even the best cases.
By the early twentieth century, however, Hanse history had come into its
own, and the focus of Hanse studies began to include social and economic
history topics much more than they had in the preceding decades. One only
need to review the list of the luminaries working in the field of Hanse history
since the first part of the twentieth century to quickly realize that Hanse his-
tory had moved from the realm of political history and antiquarian studies to a
field intensely interested in economic and social issues. Indeed, for a half cen-
tury, the widely read work by Ernst Daenell set the bar in Hanse scholarship.
Daenell’s massive two-volume work depicted the Hanse as a type of commer-
cial republic founded on economic power. But more than that, his work was
1 Philippe Dollinger, The German Hansa (Stanford: Standford University Press, 1970), 71.
2 Wilhelm Mantels, “Der Hansische Geschichtsverein,” Hanische Geschichtsblätter 1 (1871): 3.
3 Ernst Daenell, Die Blütezeit der deutschen Hanse von der zweiten Hälfte des 14. Bis zum letzten
Viertel des 15. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Reimer, 1905/1906).