Lübeck, Hanseatic City (leading city of the Hanseatic League)

Timeline

1. 1143–1356Lübeck (old town on the Trave island) · Baltic CoastIn 1143 Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony refounded Lübeck on the island in the Trave River; in 1226 Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II granted it free imperial city status. In 1241 Lübeck and Hamburg concluded a trade alliance, the core prototype of the Hanseatic League. The first formal Hanseatic Diet met in Lübeck in 1356, confirming its leading position as the League's legal center and site of diplomatic arbitration; the city's iconic brick Gothic town hall and St. Mary's Church were both built in this period.
2. 1370–1500Lübeck harbor and old town · Baltic CoastAfter the 1370 Treaty of Stralsund, the Hanseatic League's commercial dominance in the Baltic reached its peak; Lübeck led the trade in grain, stockfish, amber, and furs from Scandinavia and Novgorod in Russia to Western Europe. The city had a developed warehouse district (precursor of the Speicherstadt), textile workshops, and merchant guilds, with a population of about 25,000, making it one of the most prosperous cities in Northern Europe at the time.
3. 1621–1630Lübeck · Baltic CoastBetween 1621 and 1630 the Hanseatic League was increasingly marginalized by Dutch and English merchant shipping in the Baltic and North Sea, with active member cities shrinking from nearly two hundred at its height to only a few dozen. Lübeck still maintained its functions as the League's legal center and the site of the Hanseatic Diet. The Treaty of Lübeck, negotiated and signed in Lübeck on 12 May 1629, allowed Danish King Christian IV to exchange withdrawal of support for the Protestant princes of northern Germany for the withdrawal of Wallenstein's forces from the Jutland peninsula, ending Denmark's direct military intervention in the Thirty Years' War; Lübeck again entered history as an important Northern European diplomatic venue.
4. 1669Lübeck Town Hall · GermanyIn 1669 the last Hanseatic Diet, attended by only nine cities including Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen, convened in Lübeck and formally declared that the League could no longer sustain its commercial and political functions, ending the history of the Hanseatic League. Thereafter Lübeck continued as an independent free city until it was incorporated into the state of Hamburg in 1937; its brick Gothic old town was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.