Social Networks 175
wax to Johann van dem Springe in Lübeck, and part of this delivery was done
by order of Hans Swaneke.27
Instead of relying only on social proximity, social networks could also be
based on spatial vicinity. Towns posessed quarters with either expensive or
cheap lodging and therefore could be divided into commendable and dis-
reputable neighborhoods, a fact not only relevant in modern cities.28 Also, in
Hanseatic towns, specific quarters were rated differently by citizens. In the
same way that a person’s clothing indicated social status, location and appear-
ance of a dwelling were commonly seen as a status symbol. A house built of
stone, for instance, elevated the owner or tenant within the town’s social hier-
archy over those who still lived in wooden buildings. The prestige derived from
a dwelling’s location inside the town was highest in the center around the mar-
ket place, at the town hall or the parish church, and alongside the main streets
of the town. The prestige of a dwelling place decreased as the distance to the
center increased. The least reputable areas were usually found near the town
wall. The differing esteem for particular locations within the town affected
the social character of a specific neighborhood. A traveling Swabian noticed
in 1582 that the members of Rostock’s upper class spoke in a much more dis-
tinguished way than people living in Fisher’s street, and that the latter again
talked differently than the inhabitants of the harbor quarter of Warnemünde,
the seaside port of Rostock.
Since both the purchase and sale of houses required a special juridical pro-
tection, real estate transactions were already recorded by the end of the thir-
teenth century. For Lübeck, these property transactions can be found in the
Oberstadtbuch, a book in which notaries of the city council wrote down all
kinds of legal transactions. Ownership can be established for each house in
Lübeck from 1284 onwards based on the series of the annual records, which
27 Thomas Brück, “Bemerkungen zur Kaufmannschaft Rigas in der ersten Hälfte des 15.
Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Schwarzhäupter zwischen 1413 und
1424,” in Niels Jörn, Detlef Kattinger and Horst Wernicke, eds., “kopet uns werk by tyden”.
Beiträge zur hansischen und preußischen Geschichte. Festschrift für Walter Stark zum 75.
Geburtstag (Schwerin: Helms, 1999), 113–130, 118.
28 Dale V. Kent and Francis William Kent, Neighbours and Neigbourhood in Renaissance
Florence. The District of the Red Lion in the fifteenth Century, Villa i Tatti, vol. 6 (New York:
J.J. Augustin, 1982); Karsten Igel, “ ‘... und schal by der Lowen namen blyven’. Identität
und Selbstdarstellung städtischer Führungsgruppen im spätmittelalterlichen Hanseraum
im Spiegel ihrer Häuser und Höfe,” in Sünje Prühlen, Lucie Kuhse and Jürgen Sarnowsky,
eds., Der Blick auf sich und die Anderen. Selbst- und Fremdbild von Frauen und Männern in
Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Festschrift für Klaus Arnold, Nova Mediaevalia. Quellen und
Studien zum europäischen Mittelalter, vol. 2 (Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2007), 315–348.