The Rise of the Wendish Towns
The Wendish towns were the cities along the southern coast of the Baltic, in the region historically known as Wendland. The cities were founded or rebuilt in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, after the German eastward settlement, and they were built on the model of Lübeck, which had been refounded in 1159 by Henry the Lion with the help of Flemish and Dutch settlers. The cities shared a common legal tradition, a common merchant culture, and a common dependence on the trade of the Baltic, and they were, in time, the backbone of the Hanseatic League.
The rise of the Wendish towns was one of the most important developments in the history of medieval Europe. The cities transformed the southern Baltic from a backward Slavic region into one of the most prosperous commercial areas in Europe, and the cities were the foundation of the League’s commercial dominance for several centuries.
The model: Lübeck
Lübeck was the model for all the other Wendish towns. The city was refounded in 1159 by Henry the Lion, and the city was rebuilt according to the urban traditions of the Low Countries. The city’s town law, derived from the law of the Westphalian towns and the Saxon Sachsenspiegel, was adopted by the new towns of the region, and the common legal framework made cooperation between the towns almost automatic.
The success of Lübeck led, in the following decades, to the foundation of a chain of similar cities along the southern coast of the Baltic. Wismar was founded in 1229, Rostock in 1218, Stralsund in 1234 (chartered by Wizlaw I of Rügen), Greifswald in 1250, and Danzig in 1263. Each of these cities was built on the Lübeck model, with a long market street running parallel to the river, a town hall at one end of the market, and a parish church in the centre. The houses were built of brick, in the Gothic style that would later be known as Brick Gothic.
The chain of cities
The cities were, in the first instance, regional centres. Each had its own hinterland, its own markets, and its own merchants. But they were also connected by the trade of the Baltic, and the merchants of one city had to deal with the merchants of the other cities. The common legal tradition, derived from the law of Lübeck, made cooperation between the cities almost automatic, and the common merchant culture, derived from the long-distance trade of the Baltic, made the cooperation productive.
The result was a chain of cities — Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Danzig, Elbing, Königsberg, Riga — that stretched across the southern Baltic. The cities were not yet members of a single league, but they were the foundation on which the League would be built. The agreement of 1241 between Lübeck and Hamburg, often cited as the founding moment of the League, was the first formal act of cooperation between two of these cities, and it was followed by many more in the next decades.