A Companion to the Hanseatic League

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CHAPTER 1

The Early Hanses*

Rolf Hammel-Kiesow

Introduction

Over the last five decades, the scholarly picture of the Hanse’s pre- and early
history has changed considerably.1 Not only is this true of the original home-
land of these Lower German merchants, between the Lower Rhine and Elbe
Rivers, where settlement archaeology has unearthed new time-depth dimen-
sions of economic development,2 but also of the Baltic Region, which has been
the primary focus of this change. Sixty years ago, German historians who had
been reluctant to acknowledge “older approaches regarding city life on the
Baltic’s south coast” before the arrival of Lower German merchants as ‘culture
bearers’3 began for the first time to revise the existing historical construct of

• Translated by Lore Schultheiss.
  1 An overview of the early Hanseatic history until the mid fourteenth century is found in:
  Philippe Dollinger, Die Hanse, with a contribution, “Zur hansischen Geschichtsforschung
  1960–1997” by the same and Antjekathrin Graßmann (Stuttgart: Kröner 5. expanded edi-
  tion, 1998), 17–88, 488–493; Johannes Schildhauer and Konrad Fritze and Walter Stark, Die
  Hanse (Berlin: veb Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1974), 11–111; Heinz Stoob, Die Hanse
  (Graz et al.: Styria, 1995), 18–165; the section “Von den ‘Hansen’ zur Hanse” (1150–1300/50)
  with contributions by Erich Hoffmann, Volker Henn and Derek Keene, in Jörgen Bracker,
  ed., Die Hanse—Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos, vol. 1 (Hamburg: Museum für Hamburgische
  Geschichte, 1989), 29–49 (4. improved edition of the text volume ed. Jörgen Bracker and Volker
  Henn and Rainer Postel, Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild, 2006); Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, Die Hanse
  [C.H. Beck Wissen 2131] (München: Beck 5. newly revised edition. 2014), 21–64; Rolf Hammel-
  Kiesow, Matthias Puhle and Siegfried Wittenburg, Die Hanse (Darmstadt: Primus-Verlag
  2009), 8–52, 110–126; Gisela Graichen and Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, Die deutsche Hanse. Eine
  heimliche Supermacht (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 2011), 13–105; Stephan Selzer, Die mit-
  telalterliche Hanse [Geschichte kompakt] (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft
  2010), 13–43; Carsten Jahnke, Die Hanse [Reclam Sachbuch; Reclams Universal-Bibliothek Nr.
  19206] (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun. 2014), 25–50, 132–161.
  2 For example: Gabriele Isenberg, “Soest, ein frühes Wirtschaftszentrum (1.–12. Jahrhundert
  n. Chr.)”, Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 83 (2002), 265–281.
  3 Fritz Rörig, “Das Meer und das europäische Mittelalter,” in idem Wirtschaftskräfte im
  Mittelalter. Abhandlungen zur Stadt- und Hansegeschichte, ed. Paul Kaegbein (Cologne:
  Hermann Böhlaus Nachf, 1971; first published 1951), 647.