The St. Mary’s Church in the Pomeranian Hanseatic city of Stargard aroused the interest of scholars early on. Nevertheless, some source material containing information on its history has remained uncharted until now. Together with recent dendrochronological and archaeological research results, this material provides new insights into the medieval building history of St. Mary’s Church and allows a more precise dating. Wall relics discovered during recent archaeological excavations in the side aisle of today’s St. Mary’s suggest that the predecessor building – erected on the market square after the town-foundation around the middle of the 13th century – was a granite ashlar structure. In the late 13th century – in connection with the change in town law in 1292 and the settlement of Neu-Stargard under Lübeck law – this was replaced by a stately new brick building. Both written sources and the result of a dendrochronological examination prove that in the 1320s, the choir and the nave had been completed so far, that the church could be used for liturgy. The construction work on the monumental tower block, on the other hand, was still protracted. Around 1365, the ground floor of the northwest tower could already be used liturgically, which means that the high tower hall adjoining the north aisle in the west must have been vaulted at that time and the northwest tower must have been completed up to the vault height of the nave. In the 1380s – probably in connection with Stargard’s successful participation in the Hanseatic wars against King Waldemar of Denmark – an imposing basilican choir with ambulatory began to be built instead of the old simple retracted choir. Around 1388, the enclosing walls of the choir ambulatory must already have been completed, as the first ambulatory chapels were given to the donors and a people’s altar was donated in the eastern nave bay. The creation of a new mass order in 1397 marks the completion of the choir. Around 1400, two annexes between the choir ambulatory and the nave were built – the representative north porch (Lady Chapel; completed before 1418) and the two-storey Angel Chapel with sacristy and library on the south side (already completed in 1404). Written sources reveal a lack of free altars soon after the completion of the choir. Therefore, the latest the addition of nave chapels began in the 1440s. Presumably around 1450, the nave was also rebuilt in basilican form, and the central nave was adapted to the height of the new choir. The author links the efforts of the lay rectors of the church fabric to fill the church coffers, which can be traced for the 1470s and 1480s, with the continuation of the construction work on the west block – the erection of the south tower and the middle section of the façade. The ground floor of the south tower was already in liturgical use in 1473. The completion of the construction work on the south tower and thus on the entire western part marks the time of the production of the large bell for St. Mary’s Church, which was cast in 1499.
Das Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, auf charakteristische Merkmale spätmittelalterlicher Verfestetenregister aus preußischen Städten (14.–15. Jh.) aufmerksam zu machen. Die Recherche basiert auf Materialien aus Kulm / Chełmno, Elbing / Elbląg und Neustadt Thorn / Nowe Miasto Toruń. Der Beitrag versucht, die Relevanz der Forschungen zu Fragen wie z. B. der Genese der Register oder den charakteristischen Merkmalen ihrer Struktur nachzuweisen. Hervorgehoben wird auch die Bedeutung der Beschäftigung mit Löschungen der Proskriptionsvermerke. Beispielsweise könnte deren Fehlen auf stark veraltete Registerfragmente hindeuten, die aus einer älteren Quellengrundlage kopiert wurden. Darüber hinaus wird nachgewiesen, dass Register mit vielen gelöschten Einträgen in der Regel laufend ergänzt wurden, im Gegensatz zu jenen Registern, in denen der Prozentsatz gelöschter Proskriptionsvermerke viel kleiner ist. Es wird auch darauf hingewiesen, dass die auf den Registerkarten vorhandenen Ergänzungen und Löschungen sowie die Analyse der Anzahl der Proskriptionen in den einzelnen Jahren die Identifizierung unvollständiger (nicht kompletter) Teile des Registers erleichtern. Die im vorliegenden Text gemachten Beobachtungen zielen darauf ab, die Einschätzung des Glaubwürdigkeitsgrades eines jeden spätmittelalterlichen Verfestetenregisters und eine genauere Einschätzung ihrer Nutzbarkeit in der Forschung zu erleichtern. Sie machen auch begreiflich, dass jedes erhaltene Verfestetenregister mehr oder weniger unvollständiges Material enthält.
This article examines the efforts of Norway’s council of the realm to rescind the governing offices and trading rights of Hamburg merchants in the Faroes between the mid-1520s and mid-1530s. The limited body of prior research on the subject focuses on the commercial aims of opposing parties, treating their dispute as part of the long-standing conflict over the western Norwegian town of Bergen’s status as the staple market in North Atlantic trade. While the redirection of Faroese trade from Bergen to Hamburg was a motive, it is argued that the council and its allies were at least equally concerned by the loss of public revenues, including taxes, land rents and penal fines, which Hamburgers withheld as feudal benefices and as remuneration for service to the kings of Denmark and Norway. This was part of a broader dispute about the authority of monarchs, who ruled the Norwegian realm from Denmark, to grant offices and trading rights in the Norwegian tributaries without conciliar sanction.
For a long time, scholars dated the end of the Hanseatic League in the late 17th century. However, more recent suggestions argue that the cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck acted economically and politically together until the 18th century. A meaningful approach to this field of research is the study of the contemporaries’ knowledge and perception of the Hanseatic League, a so far neglected area of research. An important key, therefore, is the examination of German-language encyclopaedias and handbooks as representing the most relevant media mediators and collections of knowledge at that time. The analysis of these sources shows that for the writers of the 18th century, the Hanseatic League was less regarded as a vital economic and political power and more as a historical phenomenon. They perceived it as a relic of glorious times long past with only the prestigious title of the three Hanseatic core cities remaining.
Magdeburg was first mentioned in a Carolingian capitulary (Charlemagne 768–814) in 805. During the reign of Otto I (936–973) the city experienced a boom and became the metropolis of the 968 founded Magdeburg archbishopric. Later in the 12th / 13th century, the city advanced as the center of the “Magdeburg law”, which was particularly widespread in East-Central Europe. A few years after establishing the Magdeburg City Council in 1244, Magdeburg began pursuing a foreign policy independent of the archbishop and grew into the gradually emerging Hanse. Together with Braunschweig, Magdeburg became one of the principal towns of the “Saxon League of Towns”, which existed from 1384 until the 16th century. Simultaneously, they formed a “Quarter” or “Third” in the Hanseatic League. Economically, Magdeburg was an intermediate trading post between East and West and served as a grain and wood supplier for the coastal Hanseatic cities. Both, the membership in the Saxon League of Towns as well as the one in the Hanseatic League offered significant support in the long-term conflict between the city and the archbishop as its overlord, which intensified in the late Middle Ages. Despite its devastating destruction during the Thirty Years’ War, Magdeburg remained a member of the Hanseatic League until 1666. Then the city lost its freedom and thus the prospect of becoming a free Imperial city in the Kloster Berge Treaty, because it had become a part of the Electorate of Brandenburg.
