Lubeck
Since our departure from Bergen on the western shores of Norway nearly two weeks ago, we have followed in the wake of those Hanseatic merchants who, in the middle ages, transformed the Baltic into a Germanic lake. The Hansa was a merchant association, which in some ways prefigured our own supranational experience of multinational commerce, although pre-national may be a more accurate characterization. For almost half a millennium, the Hansa operated a trading network that stretched from Bergen in the north, London in the west and Novgorod in the east. A constellation of Hanseatic cities and outlying "stations" built on the eastern Mediterranean trade that had been opened up by the Vikings in the preceding centuries. A brisk exchange developed of such commodities as Flanders cloth (made from British wool), the furs and timber of the far north and the silks and spices of the Orient.
In the wake of traders, came religion. In a northern crusade, Orders of Teutonic and Livonian Knights followed the Hansa with the aim of Christianizing the Slavs. Religious divisions—Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran—now overlay the already complicated ethnic mix of the Baltic lands. Culturally and aesthetically, the Hansa left a splendid legacy, some of which—mercifully—survived the ravages of twentieth century conflict. Timber-frame houses with gable roofs, waterfront merchants' warehouses with their characteristic cranes, red-brick town halls and churches on the market square, the latter with chapels and altars dedicated to the various craft guilds: each Hanseatic city is instantly recognizable. None more so that Lubeck, the epicenter of the Hanseatic world. Today we toured the city on foot and by riverboat, periodically revived with marzipan cakes and coffee (in an elegant café) and smoked pork, sauerkraut and locally-brewed beer at an brewery. An evocative day in a city of spires, conjuring up a mediaeval world long since past.
Since our departure from Bergen on the western shores of Norway nearly two weeks ago, we have followed in the wake of those Hanseatic merchants who, in the middle ages, transformed the Baltic into a Germanic lake. The Hansa was a merchant association, which in some ways prefigured our own supranational experience of multinational commerce, although pre-national may be a more accurate characterization. For almost half a millennium, the Hansa operated a trading network that stretched from Bergen in the north, London in the west and Novgorod in the east. A constellation of Hanseatic cities and outlying "stations" built on the eastern Mediterranean trade that had been opened up by the Vikings in the preceding centuries. A brisk exchange developed of such commodities as Flanders cloth (made from British wool), the furs and timber of the far north and the silks and spices of the Orient.
In the wake of traders, came religion. In a northern crusade, Orders of Teutonic and Livonian Knights followed the Hansa with the aim of Christianizing the Slavs. Religious divisions—Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran—now overlay the already complicated ethnic mix of the Baltic lands. Culturally and aesthetically, the Hansa left a splendid legacy, some of which—mercifully—survived the ravages of twentieth century conflict. Timber-frame houses with gable roofs, waterfront merchants' warehouses with their characteristic cranes, red-brick town halls and churches on the market square, the latter with chapels and altars dedicated to the various craft guilds: each Hanseatic city is instantly recognizable. None more so that Lubeck, the epicenter of the Hanseatic world. Today we toured the city on foot and by riverboat, periodically revived with marzipan cakes and coffee (in an elegant café) and smoked pork, sauerkraut and locally-brewed beer at an brewery. An evocative day in a city of spires, conjuring up a mediaeval world long since past.
