The Hansa Towns

by Helen Zimmern

The Baltic has had its singers too. We need only turn to the strong, rugged Norse Saga to find that sea extolled as the nurse of mighty heroes, or the scene of giant combats; and the wilder element that pervades these heroic tales is in keeping with the rugged iron-bound coasts that skirt its waters, which do not invite the cooing of idyls, nor lap the fantasy in luscious dreams. Here all is stern life and movement; here man must fight hand to hand with nature if he would extort from her even the bare necessities for his daily nourishment.

The contrast between the North and the South is nowhere more strikingly seen than in the different characteristics of the two seas, and the races they have produced. Nor could these characteristics be better illustrated than by a comparison between the great commercial Republics of Italy and the Hanseatic federation of Germany. The former, though individually great, never became a corporate body. Jealousy and rivalry were ever rife among them, and in the end they destroyed themselves. Where nature is kind men can better afford to be cruel, and need not hold together in such close union. Thus it was here.

But if the Baltic is at a disadvantage compared with the Mediterranean in climate as well as in size, it is not inferior in wealth and variety of its produce. Mighty rivers, watering many lands discharge themselves into its bosom, and produce upon their banks rich and needful products, such as wheat and wool. In the earth are hidden costly metallic treasures, while the sea itself is a well of opulence from the number and diversity of the fish that breed in its waters.

It has been well said that since the days of the Hansa, possession of the Baltic and dominion of the sea are synonymous terms. The Hansa, the Dutch, and the English have necessarily played the first rôle in the Baltic trade. But the trade dates from an even earlier time. Thanks to coins accidently dropped, and after long years unearthed, we learn that by way of the Volga the Northmen brought to their distant home the treasures of the far East—spices, pearls, silks, furs, and linen garments; and that following the course of the Dwina, the Dnieper, and the Oder, they found their way to Constantinople, the Black Sea, and even the Caspian.

Canon Adam, of Bremen, a chronicler of the eleventh century, in one of those farragoes of fact and fiction in which our forefathers read history, tells of a great trading city at the month of the Oder, "Julin, the greatest town of heathen Europe."[2] "It is a famed meeting-place for the barbarians and Greeks[3] of the neighbourhood, inhabited by Slavs and other barbarians. Saxons, too, may live there if they do not declare themselves Christians; for the town is rich in the wares of all Eastern peoples, and contains much that is charming and precious."

This town of Winetha, of whose exact site we are no longer sure, since it has been destroyed by the encroachment of the Baltic, was, and is still, a favourite theme of song and legend with German writers. It is fabled that it was destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrha, because of its sins; for its inhabitants had grown hard and proud and disdainful, trusting in wealth, and despising God. On fine and calm days mariners can, it is said, behold the city, with its silver ramparts, its marble columns, its stirring, richly-dressed population, leading, beneath the ocean, the life which they led while their city was still on firm ground. Every Good Friday this splendid city, with its towers, palaces, and walls, is permitted to rise from the ocean, and sun itself in the daylight, to be again submerged on Easter Day, by this annual fall recalling to all who might else forget it the severe justice of God.

The extract given above from the old writer impresses on us a fact we must bear well in mind, namely, that the Baltic mainland littoral at the time the Teutonic merchants began to ply their trade upon its coast was not a German possession, but inhabited and owned by a Slavonic people, who clung to their pagan creed long after their neighbours in the East and West had become converted to the new religion. And, as usual to this day, it was the trader who preceded the missionary, and gave the natives the first idea of a different code of ethics and morality. In the missionary's track, as at this day, followed the soldier, enforcing by the sword the arguments that reason had failed to inculcate. It was thus that German merchants had founded on Slavonic soil the various cities and ports that were later to be the pride and strength of the Hanseatic Union. Nor did they rest content with the coast that bounded their own lands. They traversed the narrow ocean, touching Finland, Sweden, and Russia, and they established on the isle of Gothland an emporium, which, in the first Christian centuries, became the centre of the Baltic trade, and in which "people of divers tongues," as an old writer calls these visitors, met to exchange their products.

A glance at the map will show why this island assumed such importance. At a time when the mariner was restricted to short passages, not liking for long to lose sight of the shore, this spot naturally made a most favourable halting-place on the road to Finland, Livonia, or Sweden. It is evident from the chronicles that the Germans soon acquired and exercised great power in this island, and that they were accorded special privileges. Thus Pope Honorius II. granted them his protection for their town and harbour of Wisby, in acknowledgment of the part they had played in the conversion of the pagan nations.

There are many testimonies to the ancient wealth and commercial importance of the island of Gothland; among them the amount of Roman, Byzantine, Anglo-Saxon, and German coins still found on its soil, as also the number of ruined churches, many of them of great size and architectural beauty, dotted over its area. To this day the island, impoverished and depopulated, owns a church to every six hundred inhabitants. The churches have fallen into sad decay, but yet remain to testify of past prosperity and glory.

As the number of travelling merchants from various cities increased on its shores, it was natural that they should hold together more and more in a tacit offensive and defensive alliance against the aliens, and that when they returned home from their voyages they should speak of the mutual benefits rendered and the help that lay in union. Some influential persons among them doubtless brought pressure to bear upon the rulers and magistracies of the various cities to give their informal union an official character. Thus much is certain, that after a time the merchants from various cities who traded with the Baltic had united into a federation having a common seal and conforming to a common law, so that by the middle of the thirteenth century the Hanseatic League was practically consolidated, although this name for the association only occurs later.