The rise and fall of the Hanseatic League | Hacker News Reader

The rise and fall of the Hanseatic League

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If you are ever in the Hamburg area, I highly recommend making a day trip with the Regional train up to Lübeck to visit the Hanse Museum.

It's one of the most beautifully designed museums on a specific topic like this I've ever seen (it's also very accessible). The entire museum and all of its stations are translated into various languages by scanning a card you set up at the beginning, including customizing your information experience with certain topics you're particularly interested in (I chose naval architecture, if memory serves).

There's a cute coffee shop or two right there in the complex too, and the entirety of Lübeck is a beautiful, cozy area too. Many of the old Hanseatic buildings still stand as they were relatively untouched by the war.

Another hour in the same direction on the train takes you to the Travemünde beaches which are also gorgeous. Makes for a good day trip.

And if you always wanted to visit Hamburg you could easily combine it with attending Chaos Communication Congress. Two birds with one stone!

Other nerdy things to do there:

- Visit the container terminals of Europe's third busiest port

- Go to the Miniaturwunderland

- If you are into architecture or music: Elbphilharmonie

Yeap have heard from (grown up!) friends about https://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/ and always wanted to visit!

I spent three and half hours there and it felt rushed0. I would highly recommend watching some behind the scenes videos before going, it makes things that much more interesting.

> easily combine it with attending Chaos Communication Congress

"Easily" as in "26th to 30th of December, and tickets are available on three days in November if you can click fast enough" ;)

I hear you but 26th to 30th of December is the perfect time, what else are going to do in this otherwise useless part of the year? Have family? Bring them, C3 is a pretty family friendly event.

Also, clicking fast is what we nerds excel at, right;-)

More seriously, when it comes to tickets my impression was that the post-pandemic years were pretty relaxed with only last year becoming more difficult again.

I've been to C3 when it was in Berlin, then in Hamburg, then in Leipzig, but haven't been to it since it's back in Hamburg after the pandemic - before that it was always a bit of a fight with crashing ticket systems and other people's perl scripts :D So not necessarily my definition of something that you can easily just do on a spontaneous visit to Hamburg ;)

>Visit the container terminals of Europe's third busiest port

I wish more big industrial sites were set up for tourist access: mines, quarries, dams, ports etc. But maybe I'm just strange.

What exactly do you mean by - Visit the container terminals of Europe's third busiest port ?

It's not like you could walk or ride around in there, and you shouldn't either.

It's all fenced, secured.

There are a few vantage points from where you can see into them, from afar, or the other side of the river, but that's it.

Drones? Uh Oh! Better not! Lingering around the fences to get a better view? Are you trying to find the smuggled drugs in some container? Trespassing into some empty quay which has recently been torn down, then elevated, now lying empty, to explore the growth of so called 'pioneer plants'? Better not, because signs say fine is 1000EUR. GULP!

> The next year, Edward II reaffirmed Hansa merchants’ freedom from taxes, travel, and arrest in exchange for £1,000 (which would have been three percent of the Crown’s total annual tax revenues). Remarkably, he even promised that neither he nor subsequent kings would place new restrictions on the Hansa without their consent. These privileges ensured that Hanseatic merchants paid even lower tax rates than their English counterparts.

Autocracy and the absence of accountability (either financial or criminal) for the very wealthy is an age old problem that we still deal with.

How can people muster up the bile to be jealous and resentful of people who died hundreds of years ago? They are dust, you are alive. Do something with the fantastic gift of life while you still have it. Soon enough you will also be dust.

Where do you see jealousy in the comment?

Hansa wasn’t a democracy or an autocracy — in my understanding, it was an entirely consensus-based organization. At the Bremen town hall, I learned about the tagfahrt, where they would wait for the representatives to come to consensus. Once they started the meeting, it would continue for days until they actually reached consensus.

Just like European Council or NATO.

In European Council proposal will only be adopted if all member states are in agreeance. Formal voting does not take place, the member states deliberate until they reach general agreement.

NATO is the same. Any Article consultations like Article 4, or 5 end with consensus. One country can water it down.

Consensus based does not mean equal. Big participants usually throw their weight around a lot.

"Patrician II/III", anyone ? my favorite game when i was kid, second only to Civilization

Ahh, half-timbered houses, parties and pirate hunting. It was a nice day when GoG put it up as one of their good old games.

I wanted Imperium III and I got Patrician III by mistake. I didn't know how to play it at first as it wasn't your typical strategy game but after a while it became my favorite game.

I ended up controlling the whole Hanseatic League from Lübeck.

Good times.

Lübeck wasn't even the "best" for anything

i distinctly remember the "beer from Gdansk -> Textile from Malmo -> sell everything in Lübeck" route

No, it wasn't the best but it's the first city I picked and I ended up liking it the most.

Also I think it was the easiest wealthy city to raid as a pirate, so you could donate a lot of money as a mayor and then steal it as a pirate only to donate it again and earn reputation.

The first title of the series either came bundled with my first sound card, or I bought it separately at the same time.

I enjoyed "Die Fugger" a lot. Unfortunately it never saw the success of "The Patrician".

The following funny little side story might have contributed to that:

The game's publisher Sonflower was sued by a descendant of the Fugger family because they claimed the game puts the name of his family in a bad light. They won and "Die Fugger II" could not be sold anymore. "Die Fugger III" appeared under the name "Die Gilde".

die Fugger, best Game of my childhood! thanks for the reminder!

Oh, didn't know the game I know as "The Guild" had a longer past.

It had 2 more sequels after Die Gilde, in fact.

When I was an exchange student in Germany, the host family had Hanse: Die Expedition[1] on their computer, which they explained to me but I also had to kind of feel my way through, not being completely fluent in German. You'd play as a merchant, sending out salt to other ports to trade for goods. Each turn was a year, and it would go through many generations, the goal being to contribute enough from your profits to build a cathedral.

Other things I remember:

- When you'd die, you'd pick an heir from your kids. They would be described as (sometimes you were supposed to understand as) being skilled at either fighting, exploring, or trading. If you didn't have an old enough one to pick, you'd have to pay a lot for some godparent to take over in the interim.

- You could raise capital by selling shares in your operation, but the more shares outstanding, the more interest (Zinsen) you'd have to pay. (You could also buy them back, but they'd be more expensive when you had a good year.)

- If you couldn't pay your obligations, you'd lose a turn to the Schuldturm (debtor's prison, lit. "debt tower").

- You could send explorers to find more lucrative ports, Novgorod being a good one.

- Depending on the weather, you might lose ships. Sometimes you wouldn't want to send any out, in which case it would warn you, "Keine Koggen auf der See! Zug wirklich beenden?" ("No cogs[2] on the sea! Really end turn?")

- You would get random events each turn, one of them being a soothsayer that would offer to predict your fortune. They would then give you the option to pay for extra advice, which would always be "Don't trust charlatans!"

- As your empire expanded, you'd be promoted in rank, some of the higher ones being Senator or Patrician.

- There would be battles, as nobles would sometimes attack your ports.

[1] https://www.mobygames.com/game/9273/hanse-die-expedition/

[2] A kind of ship used back then (also mentioned in the article as replacing the Knarr): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cog_(ship)?useskin=vector

There is a great podcast, The History of the Germans, that have a season on the Hanseatic League. Its a great podcast if you enjoy history in general, the host isn't a professor or anything, but he does a great job with research and also makes interesting connections with how certain events were interpreted by German Nationalists, Fascists, Modern Day, etc. which is interesting.

https://historyofthegermans.com/hanseatic-league/

I live in an Hanseatic League city (Stralsund) and the city still owns lots of land and is a rich one, hundreds of years later (though insignificant today).

Same here with Gdańsk, Poland. You can see the same Hanseatic influence even in this he architecture

I was amazed when I visited, you can see just how much it looks like other Hanse-cities, Bremen for example. Of course a lot of it is newly constructed/restored, because there wasn't much left after the German did their thing with Poland in WW2

Little nitpic, Gdansk was a free city, neither Polish nor German when nazis annexed it in 1939. Most of the destruction happened in 1945 because of fighting with the red army.

And the Russians. For some reasons everyone seems to forget that the invasion of Poland (and other East European countries) was a joint operation by Germany and Russia (not to diminish any atrocities etc. perpetuated by Germans).

Especially in this case, because the city was also called Danzig before and (after various owners over the centuries, mostly Polish [0]) was co-owned-German (free city, German leaning because of ethnicity) at the time of WW2. Destruction should then have been (haven't verified that) by the Red Army (again not to diminish any German war crimes - also [1]).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gda%C5%84sk

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Westerplatte

Ha, my high school was named after a related event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_of_the_Polish_Post_Off...)

Also known for a song about three boys, the youngest of whom—who, to put it mildly, didn’t have his life together—made a choice. (This is heavy dad-humour though.)

    Trzech synów matka miała,
    Dwóch słynęło z mądrości,
    A trzeci, co był głupi,
    Poszedł do łączności!

That said, it's a paraphrase of an older song about WWI.

(the school was fine, and my dorm was a constant nerd-fest, so I am not complaining)

i think its because the germans deliberately destroyed cities, like Warsaw (not sure if it was done as systemstically in other cities). they literally dynamited the old city and levelled it to the ground

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Warsaw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pabst_Plan

Krakow was famously deliberately spared on Hitler's orders

i dont think the soviets did the equivalent. And they poured a lot of resources in to restoring the old town in warsaw after the war

Id love to be corrected if im wrong

Both Russia and Germany engaged in scorched earth destruction when on the retreat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbCGhqhKK-8

So you agree it was a joint military operation and everyone forgets that, but want to add the Germans were worse, which made everyone forget it was a joint operation?

Trying to paint Russians as the good guys, in 2025?

> The most extensive and destructive of the Soviet air assaults was carried out on 9–10 March 1944 in connection with the Battle of Narva. A week before, the mayor of Tallinn had given an order to the city dwellers to leave the town, but the evacuation failed, as the extent of the attack was beyond the expectations of the local people and the German Army Group North. The first attack, from 6:30 – 9:00 pm, saw 300 aircraft drop 3068 bombs, 1725 explosive and 1300 incendiary.[4][5][3] Bombers hit the capital again at 2 a.m. for an additional hour and a half.[3] The fire brigades were scarce on water, as Soviet saboteurs had blown up the city pumping station before the air raid. A large part of the wooden suburbs went up in flames, and the city centre suffered major damage. In all, about twenty percent of the buildings in Tallinn were burnt to the ground.[3]

> Military damage was minor, with a few military installations and supply stores destroyed. The major military loss was the burning of a million litres of fuel in the fuel depot. Of the enterprises with some military importance, the "Luther" plywood factory and the Urania-Werke-run cable factory were destroyed. Most of the bombs fell on the dwellings and public buildings, including the Estonia Theatre, St. Nicholas Church, the city synagogue, four cinemas, and the Tallinn City Archives.[6]

> According to the official report, 757 people were killed, of whom 586 were civilians, 50 were military personnel, and 121 were prisoners-of-war. 213 had serious injuries, 446 had minor injuries. Amongst the injured were 65 military servicemen and 75 prisoners-of-war. Later, more victims were found, with the number of deaths estimated at up to 800.[5] More than 20,000 people were left without a shelter in the spring thaw, while the military objects were almost untouched.[4][7] Immediately after the bombing raid Finnish air force bombers followed returning Soviet bombers to three military airbases near Leningrad and bombed them.[8] During the attack, fuel tanks were destroyed and ca 25 Soviet airplanes were shot down in Tallinn with an additional ten destroyed by the Finnish Air Force (Ilmavoimat) later the same night.[3] Finland's actions prevented a third attack wave, likely saving Tallinn’s old city from complete destruction.[9]

Shameless plug for Tallinn but as I used to live there I have to also mention that despite the Soviets efforts the old town is well-preserved, lovely, and definitely worth a visit! I put together a visitors guide after a monthlong visit this May in case its useful: https://www.rebootinganation.com/exploring-tallinn

Of course. But I'm the Russians did not make sure to level any building over three stories in basically any Polish city during their retreat

I would HIGHLY recommend visiting Visby (and Gotland, Sweden in general) for anyone interested in this sort of history

There's a remarkable painting depicting that (Hanseatic-era Visby). I'd always been fascinated by the hats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdemar_Atterdag_holding_Visb... ("Valdemar Atterdag holding Visby to ransom, 1361")

In the battle the local farmers resisted the Danes as they retreated to the walls of the town where the townsfolk didn’t let them in. They were slaughtered and then the townsfolk surrendered. The mass graves of the farmers have been a major archeological excavation.

looks like the urbanites always had a lack of compassion for the ruralites.

What a well written piece. This is why I come to Hacker News. Bravo.

My thoughts exactly!

If you’re interested in merchant trade especially on the sea, explore the history from 970-931 BCE. It’s incredibly interesting.

Any specific recommendation? I'd like to watch a documentary on it.

Found some:

History Channel Documentary - King Solomon And The Queen Of Sheba https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VE9-6kHW6Q

The Priceless Treasure Of The Queen Of Sheba | Myth Hunters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tpoz1rGuM

The Story of the Queen of Sheba https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSPuFjFeuYQ

The Queen of Sheba's Mysterious Legacy (S2, E8) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq32h2zzg5o

Sheba: The Lost Kingdom of the Queen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySHMIeJW3lE

The Lost Gold of King Solomon (S1, E7) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjWG4geGLHQ

The Naked Archaeologist 206 - The Legacy of King Solomon Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGjETo2221k

The Entire History of the Phoenicians (2500 - 300 BC) Ancient History https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-p8OZz5KJoo

The Phoenicians: Princes of the Sea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLHj1n9VTdI

History of the Phoenicians: The Maritime Superpowers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU4aU5yoyp4

Revealing a Lost Mediterranean Civilization from the Levant to Spain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmp-d6XhQjM

The Quest For The Phoenicians https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBObLQZdeq8

Quest for the Phoenicians (National Geographic Documentary) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9hsjf8

The Phoenicians Before Columbus Expedition | WYL Ep. 201 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcnYtAqn0iw

Phoenicians Before Columbus - Video for the Explorer's Club NY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jjFiiosh7A

Ancient Egypt - When Egyptians Ruled the Sea | FD Ancient History https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGTXqmbM-0w

When Ancient Egyptians Ruled the Sea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RMuyEyCDTw

Sea Peoples: The Ancient Warriors Who Challenged Egypt https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i0XTCjjg3mQ

Sea Peoples and the Bronze Age Collapse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CB7bo4f6E8

1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LRHJlijVU

The Minoans | Ancient Worlds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VJqnTlbCS0

The Surprisingly Sophisticated Conveniences of Mycenae https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VmObzEWIEA

Ancient Sailing Ships from Bronze Age Scandinavia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aFoy25t_Ns

The Nordic Bronze Age: Best Time to Ever be Alive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_yKrkna1Dc

Lost Worlds of the Mediterranean | Drain the Oceans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmH4FDs3yl0

Explore the Hidden Wonders of Jordan and Iran with Christopher Clark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeF_Y4OU9ow

Man I hate to ask for a non-video resource after your link generosity, but if you know one, I’ll be that guy.

> History Channel Documentary - King Solomon And The Queen Of Sheba

Thanks, I just spent 2 months in Ethiopia and have been wanting to learn more about Queen Sheba!

I thought of the Hanza from the Metro books. I guess my European history knowledge isn't that great.

Firstly, the article is appreciated - thanks. Now a minor gripe: several links I've clicked for further info point at paywalled matter, even for straightforward explanatory stuff like "moldboard plows" and, yes - I can go find info about such plows elsewhere but it breaks the stride when all that's needed is a sentence or two for clarification, not somebody's curated PhD thesis... ;->

Hamburg is mentioned in the article but not shown on the map?

It just shows the Kontors

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