Hamburg as a Hanseatic City

The Hanseatic League has its roots in the Viking age and was an association of travelling co-operatives to which merchants and cities belonged. Its aim was to carry through trading interests by means of negotiating the exchange of goods between the eastern regions with their raw materials and the western regions with their commercial production. A network of jointly co-ordinated merchant groups, being on the one hand reliant on the various trading privileges abroad (Novgorod/Russia, Sweden, Norway, England, Bruges/Flanders) and on the other hand having been founded on an inner Hanseatic preferential system, was decisively in favour of this.

Hamburg and especially Lübeck, which played an outstanding role as the "head of the Hanseatic League", were solidly integrated in the trading network from the 13th to the 15th centuries. While Lübeck's connections went in all directions at first, they were limited to the Baltic Sea region at the end of the 15th century. Hamburg orientated itself more strongly towards the west as well as its inland surrounding countryside on the river Elbe.

The decline of the Hanseatic League was heralded by shift in trading routes, structural changes in the European economic countryside as well as the consolidation of the German territorial principalities and kingdoms. Since the transition from the 15th to the 16th century, while Lübeck's star was sinking, Hamburg was able to extend its influence and to gain entry across the river Elbe into the pan-European trade now in existence.

- From a Saxon Village to a Fortified Mission and Trading Post
- Ecclesiastical Hamburg
- Hamburg as a Hanseatic City
- The Cog - A Cargo-carrying Vessel of the Middle Ages