The ‘Golden Age’ of the Hanseatic League 79
If there were conflicts between their most important territorial lord, the
Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights, and the Russian principalities, in
most cases this would have threatened the Hanseatic trade. Thus, when the
Teutonic Knights attacked the principality of Pskov in 1367, North German
merchants were arrested in Novgorod. The Order and the towns reacted by
prohibiting the export of salt and herring to Russia, especially by Russian
merchants in Livonia. In 1371, the trading relations were renewed, and in 1373
envoys from Lübeck and Visby came to Novgorod to secure the peace which
had been established, but in the 1380s the situation became more difficult. The
Knights wanted to extend their own trade into the Kontor, while the Prussian
towns tried to increase their influence.58 The Order’s demands were explicitly
rejected by the other towns who decided at the assembly in Lübeck in May
1388 that the Prussian merchants were allowed to go to Novgorod only when
they did not deal with money from their spiritual or secular lords who could
not claim the privileges of the German merchants for themselves.59 But at the
same assembly, a more far reaching decision was taken: to blockade the town
of Novgorod because of the continuous troubles. Town councillors of Lübeck,
Visby, and the Livonian towns were sent out to win over the master of the
Teutonic Knights in Livonia and the Livonian bishops to support this measure,
interrupting not only the trade over sea, but also on the Daugava. Also the king
of Sweden, his Finnish officials, Stockholm, and the Prussian towns were asked
to join the blockade. At the same time, there was a blockade in the West, in
Flanders, which was an important market for the goods from Russia, which
made the measures against Novgorod easier.
When the situation changed in the West, in the autumn of 1391, Lübeck sent
out two experienced town councillors, Johann Niebur and Godeke Travelmann,
to Livonia and Russia.60 Since the Prussian towns did not succeed in joining
the envoys,61 Niebur and Travelmann were accompanied to Novgorod only by
town councillors from Riga, Reval, and Dorpat. In August 1392, they reached an
agreement which was soon termed ‘Niebur’s kiss of the cross’ (Kreuzküssung
Nieburs)—according to its specific Russian form of confirmation—and which
would regulate the relations between the German merchants and the Russians
for more than 100 years. It contained the mutual renewal of all privileges con-
cerning the trade of the Germans in Novgorod and of the Russians in Livonia
58 Cf. Daenell, Blütezeit, 2, 103.
59 hr i 3, 380 §§ 11, 14.
60 For Niebur cf. Birte Schubert, “Der Lübecker Bürgermeister Johann Niebur,” in Akteure
und Gegner der Hanse, 53–65.
61 hr i 4, 26 § 2.