Städte, hitch-hiking and the Hanseatic League

Thinking about 'Ulrike' the other day reminded me of a curious factoid; the Germans are awfully kind to hitch-hikers. By that I do not mean that they always pick you up, although the longest I was stranded on my first trip to Germany was five hours, but rather you can have a fairly good idea of where the car is heading by the number plate. the 'Kraftfahrzeug-Kennzeichen'. In that first year, I had little in the way of an itinerary and was merely out to see as much of the country as I possibly could. As a result, I would mentally run through a map of West Germany (this was 1972 and pre-unification days) to see if the car's 'town of origin' was anywhere that I was interested in visiting and amending my 'destination' accordingly. This probably accounts for my success in securing rides, including one from a real-life member of the nobility, to wit, 'Der Baron von Gemmingen', although what he was doing living just outside Aschaffenburg instead of in Baden-Württenberg to the south is anybody's guess. I wonder if the Fair-Isle jumper that my mother knitted is now handed down as a priceless family heirloom? I left it on his central heating boiler to dry and promptly forgot to retrieve it!*

At that time, and now, the first letters on the vehicle registration plate denoted the city, town or district in which the car had been registered. Many countries have a similar system, although it can be hard to decipher the 'code', but the Germans made it laughably easy; There was a single letter for large cities, 'F' for Frankfurt,  'K' for Köln (Cologne)**; two letters for smaller towns, 'EN' for Essen, 'BA' for Bayreuth; three letters for districts centred on even smaller towns, 'GAP' (Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the surrounding area). This is, however, not foolproof, in a modern society people move around a lot, but the Germans, hyper-efficient to the last, overcame that minor bugbear to the hitch-hiker; in Germany you have to change your car registration plate if you move out of the area covered by the coded prefix to your existing plate!

So, depending on the time of day, you could have a pretty good idea of where someone was going; in the morning a car carrying 'F' going south along the Autobahn was likely going to Würzburg*** or beyond, in the evening, going north, it was likely heading back to Frankfurt.

Interestingly enough, when the system, which had been in existence since 1906, was reactivated in 1956 (it had been in abeyance during the period of occupation****), the West German  'Bundesregierung' (government) included the cities and districts of what had become the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik - East Germany) which surely showed an optimism and a belief in a 'pipe-dream' which was almost unheard of at the time.

There are just three 'exceptions' to this 'rule'. Fortunately, from a hitch-hiking perspective, they are in the same area of the country, to the north, just below Germany's puncture wound into Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein. They are 'HH' (Hamburg), HB***** (Bremen/Bremerhaven) and HL (Lübeck), all major cities deserving of the single letter prefix. So why are they not accorded the same status as Frankfurt or Köln? Simple. The cities are named for this purpose, 'Hansestadt Hamburg', 'Hansestadt Bremen' and 'Hansestadt Lübeck', something the cities chose for themselves in memory of the Hanseatic League.

The 'Hanse' (Hanseatic League) was a loose economic and political grouping founded by merchants along the North Sea and Baltic coasts in the thirteenth century, a medieval 'Bilderberg' group, although wielding a great deal more muscle! It developed out of a loose alliance in the twelfth century between Hamburg in the west, with access to the North Sea via the navigable River Elbe and Lübeck in the East with access to the Baltic Sea, primarily to counter the hold the Vikings had on trade throughout the Baltic region and inland as far as Novgorod, which lies on the River Volkhov between Moscow and St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad).

The League, which numbered over one hundred and fifty cities at the height of its power, was never an overtly political grouping, although its member cities had managed to wangle considerable concessions from successive Holy Roman Emperors, Princes and Kings, who effectively controlled much of Western Europe at that time. They enacted their own laws and raised their own armies, even going so far as to sack København (Copenhagen) in 1358 to ensure their trade rights in the Baltic and, subsequently, control over the Scandinavian economies.

They were, at first, admired for their wealth and the power it gave to them, not least by merchants who were forced to compete with them. However this did not last, Their presence in London, which was vehemently opposed by English traders, was only ended in 1598 by Elizabeth the First's forcible ejection of the League and the closure of its main trading post, 'Der Stalhof',****** 'the steelyard', an isolated and walled community as in other foreign cities in which the League had a presence. It was reopened by James I but was burnt down in the Great Fire of London and was never re-built. The London site was where Cannon Street (railway) station now stands and is commemorated by the appositely named street, 'Steelyard Passage'

The first sign of cracking in the League's power probably stems form the 'Dutch-Hanseatic war of 1438–41 when the merchants of Amsterdam sought and eventually gained free access to the Baltic and broke the League's monopoly. Those trade routes were probably not the only bone of contention between the League and the Dutch; the Hanse were the leading shipbuilders in the Middle Ages and Amsterdam was keen to hook into that market for its own burgeoning shipbuilding industry.

By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the writing was on the wall for the Hanse. The growth of the Swedish Empire and their subsequent dominance over large areas of the Baltic; Nürnberg's (Nuremberg) growth as a major centre for overland trade into Poland and Russia beyond, in direct defiance of the League; Amsterdam's, and by extension the Duchy of Burgundy's, fuelled by the support of Prussian and Livonian Hanseatic cities, rise to dominance in the Polish and Baltic grain trade;******* the League's failure to adopt the Italian banking practice of 'Bills of Exchange' in preference to silver coin; the rise in political power of Germany's ruling Princes and the creation of new States. Finally, the Hanse were unable to adapt to the changing political landscape of Europe and its ever increasing, and ultimately fragmenting,  reliance on the self-interest of its member cities, as opposed to the interests of the League itself, caused its ultimate downfall.

There is an interesting footnote to this which I gleaned from Wiki (so I hope that it is true). Lübeck was by far the most powerful city in the League; for some eastern Baltic member cities, the right to appeal did not stem from the Holy Roman Emperor but from the city council in Lübeck! Hamburg,  Lübeck and Bremen have always styled themselves as 'Free (and) Hanseatic' cities. However, in 1937, the National Socialists revoked this privilege, so Wiki recounts, "after the Senat (city council) of Lübeck did not permit Adolf Hitler to speak in Lübeck during his election campaign. He held the speech in Bad Schwartau, a small village on the outskirts of Lübeck. Subsequently, he referred to Lübeck as "the small city close to Bad Schwartau."



* The jumper was a bit like the picture below (left). Not de riguer for the 'hippie' that I was, all loon pants, tie-dye T shirts and hair half way down my back, but still a feat of my mother's knitting skill.

** Which is why the German for 'Eau de Cologne' (perfume) is 'Kölnisches Wasser' (Cologne Water - a direct translation of the French phrase or vice versa, I never knew which.)
*** Where I first tasted the deliberately sour wine from the Rheinland and which I have never found again since that last bottle with 'Ulrike'. It was actually very nice and not a bit like 'white wine gone off' which you would imagine from the name.
**** A fact, occupation, which is often forgotten by modern day Europeans.
***** Also a well known brand of cancer-stick in Germany.
****** Probably Middle Low German for 'steel yard, as opposed to Middle High German, in which Stal means 'Stall', as in cows; Modern German is Stahl(hof) from MHG 'Stahel'.
******* So important was this to Amsterdam's subsequent prosperity that it was called 'Moedernegotie', the 'mother of all trades'

PS I promise to go back to 'all English' titles for the next post. 'Städte' is the plural of Stadt, city.