Institutions of Hanseatic Trade

Front matter

Ulf Christian Ewert / Stephan Selzer

Institutions of Hanseatic Trade

Studies on the Political Economy of a Medieval Network Organisation

Chapter 2: Reputation, Trust and Culture - the Network

Structure of Hanseatic Trade and its Benefits... 29 The Network Structure of Hanseatic Trade... keinen 31 Forms of Commercial Exchange and Cooperation... snoiidai dane 31 Firm size and Network Organisation... 33 Overlapping Circles of Family and Business... 35

Coordination of the Network Trade System... 39 The Viability of Hanseatic Reciprocal Trade

COSE Savin 8S). nennen The Minimisation of Contractual Risks

Chapter 3: A ‘Small World’ - Reconstruction and Meaning of the Hansards’ Social Networks... 59 The Theoretical Concept of Social Networks... 59

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Social Networks within the Hanse - Examples and

Corresponding SoürteS narenn ao ai 63 Conditions of the Emerging Networks - Population Growth änd:Migrations..aeseutaiienie u duniesainensninehg E E Kinship Networks among Hansards Wills as a Source of Network Reconstruction — the Case: of. TUDE K ee en 68 Social Proximity vs. Spatial Vicinity -

Chapter 4: Bridging Distances and Filling Gaps - Strategies

Extension of European Trade to the Baltic Sea - Merchants. anid Cities... ia nein 77

Unequal Hanseatic Commercial Settings -

Sources Of Heterogeneity: kennen E e The Dissimilarity of Mercantile Environments site

Bridging and Filling the Gap — Strategies to Balance

Hedging Against the Risks of Transportation... 88 Networking and Reciprocal Trade... 90 Standardisation and Homogenisation of Commercial Institutions and Culture... 92

Success and Failure of Hanseatic Strategies to Cope with Heterogeneity... sssecssesseesnsesnsesssesseeesseeeseeesneesneecneecnteeneeneees 95

Chapter 5: State of Cities, Commercial Trust, or Virtual

The Paradoxical Outward Appearance of the Hanse A Theoretical Concept - the Network Network Approach and Virtual Organisations inps a aii 103 The Hanse’s Network Trade and its Virtual Character... 104 The Organisational Multiplexity of the Hanse... 107

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Problems of Coordination and Institutions to Enhance Cooperation... enin e sieiann 109 The Second-order Problem of Coordination... 112 Determinants of Fruitful Cooperation and of Cooperation: Failure sessment tinia ii 120

Chapter 6: Competitive Advantage or Limit to Business? — The Context of the Hanseatic Network Organisation... 123

Economic Effects of the Hanseatic Network Organisation Effectiveness and Profitability of Hanseatic Trade

Economic Growth and Collective Welfare...

The Scope of Hanseatic Trade...

The Development of the Hanse’s Network Organisation and Adaptations Missed Because of the Success of the Network Organisation ....neneneenenenensensenseennensnessennnsnnnnn 138 The Multiplicity of Structure, and a Mismatch The Change of Economic Conditions... 143 Chapter 7: Perspectives of Research into Hanseatic Trade — A Short: Look. Back asc uaccandasaetta unin ohn cnet A a 147 Network Organisation as a Formative Pattern of Pre-modern: Trade... us 220 anal 149 The Hanse as a Political Organisation... 152 The Structural Change around the Year 1500... 153 Insights Relevant to Historical Economics of Trade... 154 Bibhogtaphy....2 ru 159 Wi

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Foreword

By the year 2000, the idea of networks had developed into social science mainstream. The concept was highly esteemed not only as a metaphor of modern society but also for providing social science and economics with tools seemingly capable of more accurately assessing the structure and dynamics of a world obviously becoming increasingly information-oriented and increasingly globalised. During the previous decade, by applying the pattern of personal networks to firms, an economic dimension was added to the concept of social networks, a concept which had already been in use for quite some time in sociology. In the economics’ literature of the 1990s on business networks, then a new and immensely growing field, the network, known before only as a specific form of social structure, was now appraised as a sort of third principle of coordination for commercial exchange that existed in its own right beside the market and the hierarchy.

With this in mind, and deeply inspired by the early articles of Avner GREIF on the Maghribi traders, in which he used several aspects of the network concept for his description and analysis of a medieval Mediterranean system of trade that was based on culture, friendship and reputation without naming it a network (GREIF instead called it a ‘coalition’), we prepared a working paper for an international business history conference in 2001. In this paper, we started to make use of the concept of network organisation with respect to the analysis of Hanseatic trade. Originally designed only to explain the astounding flexibility of the late medieval merchants of the Hanse in handling all relevant business information, the analysis soon turned to a much larger scope because we found an almost perfect match of theory with some stylised facts concerning the trading practices and the pattern of Hanseatic trade. By taking the concept of network organisation as a model of Hanseatic trade, we were able to show that many features of this late medieval institutional arrangement such as the dominance of small-size firms and reciprocal trade without formal contracting, a slow transfer of information between merchants, a lack of risk capital and certain forms of sociability among Hansards were either elements of a network organisation or directly related to this specific structural pattern. More-

Ulf Christian Ewert and Stephan Selzer - 9783631661833 Heruntergeladen von PubFactory am05/16/2018 01:20:11PM via Peter Lang AG over, since the concept of network organisation was originally developed in light of postmodern business firms, its high explanatory potential for a late medieval system of trade proved that a discussion, initiated by Wolfgang von STROMER in the 1970s, about the apparent backwardness of Hanseatic merchants compared to the emerging Upper German business houses was, in a way, an inappropriate judgement on the efforts of specific trade institutions.

Beginning with the publication of our study in German in the leading scholarly journal of Hanse research - the Hansische Geschichtsblatter - in 2001, the idea of networks became an increasingly important topic in the research into the Hanse, to which we contributed further with several other articles. We recognise, quite happily of course, that the issue of networks is still of interest in current Hanse historiography. However, the tone of the debate has somehow changed, and the concept itself is now mainly used in its obvious metaphorical sense rather than in a way allowing for further exploitation of its explanatory power. Describing the Hanse as a network would only repeat a self-evident fact. And to be clear, this is something we have never said. We have shown instead that the institutional arrangement found by the merchants of the Hanse for their commercial exchange can be described in terms of network organisation, and this particular finding then opens the floor for a further in-depth analysis of the institutional mechanisms which made the commercial exchange of Hansards work.

For the first time, this volume presents the different aspects of the medieval Hanse as a network organisation which we so far have presented to an international audience in separate working papers at international workshops and international conferences such as the International Economic History Congress 2006 in Helsinki, the European Social Science History Conference 2006 in Amsterdam, the European Historical Economics Society Conferences 2009 in Geneva and 2011 in Dublin and the International Medieval Congress in Leeds 2012. We are grateful to all those who helped to make this opportunity happen. This book intends to re-focus Hanse research on the issue of institutions and institutional arrangements of trade, on the interplay of these institutions and on its driving mechanisms as well as to re-connect the research into Hanseatic trade to the international debates in economics and economic history on incentive structures and the meaning of institutions in medieval trade.

Chapter 1 Hanse History and Economics

a New Institutional Economics Perspective on Hanseatic Trade

Points of Departure

This book is about the Hanseatic trade system and its institutions, which were invented, used and further developed by the merchants of the Hanse for their commercial exchange. We are not giving a comprehensive historiographical description of the medieval Hanse. Indeed, what we are aiming at is instead the explanation, on the theoretical grounds of institutional economics, of both the specific structure of this trade system and the mechanisms deployed to coordinate economic activities within it. This book can, and should, also be read as an attempt to mediate between two sciences. We attempt to describe and explain the structure and function of the late medieval Hanse and the commerce of its merchants by using economic theoretical concepts, namely from New Institutional Economics. Therefore, the book solicits understanding between the disciplinary cultures of medieval historical research and modern economics. It thus falls “between two cultures”, a very conscious positioning which follows the economic historian Carlo M. CiPoLLA, who sees economic history exactly there; between historical research and economics.! CIPOLLA’s reasoning is that, for economic historians, taking a position between these two cultures creates an exceptional opportunity to profitably function as interpreters between two very differently structured fields of research. However, not all historians feel safe in this position or role, but instead experience a strange inner strife. For instance, recent discussions concerning the purpose of economic history in Germany bear witness to this specific problem.?

1 Cf. CıroLLa 1991; PIERENKEMPER 1995. 2 Cf. Truıy 1994; AMBROSIUS (ed.) 1996; SCHREMMER (ed.) 1998; BERGHOFF / VoGEL (eds.) 2004; ScHULZ et al. (eds.) 2004.

When modern economic theory is applied to medieval history, there is always the potential risk that the result of such an undertaking might be appear like the moderation of a dialogue between the audibly impaired. It would, therefore, seem imperative to elucidate the concept of this book and our viewpoint. It is founded on two assumptions: firstly, the argumentation is based on the idea that the economic dimension is of key significance in understanding the medieval Hanse. This consideration might sound banal, but what is elaborated in the first section of this chapter is not as self-evident as it would or should seem. A careful analysis of the economic dimension of the Hanse should, and this is our second assumption, be organised as a fruitful exchange between historians with an economic interest and economists with an interest in history. Economic approaches, in particular New Institutional Economics and New Political Economy, would seem to offer an interesting invitation for those concerned with economic history. Therefore, for those who are unfamiliar with New Institutional Economics, its methodological basis and its concepts will be briefly outlined in the second section of this chapter. There, we will also present some approaches to certain Hanseatic phenomena by economists.

Hanse Research, the Economy and Economics

Research into the Hanse has always had a high standing within the field of medieval history, although its impact appears to be more or less restricted to historical research in Germany. This is mainly due to the fact that the medieval Hanse is still considered as merely a ‘German’ phenomenon. The still high reputation of Hanse research is undoubtedly connected to the fact that it has always possessed a great aptitude for integrating new issues, innovative methods and (naturally) the latest trends in science, an ability it has preserved to this day. For other fields of historical research - one may consider, for example, research into the history of war, engineering, councils or the German Peasant War - this is not always quite self-evident. The paradigmatical openness of Hanse history also mirrors the ongoing debate on what the Hanse really was, which presumably has prevented an ossification of Hanse research with respect to both its subject matter and methodology.

What the core of Hanse research should be has however in recent decades shifted a number of times. This is also due to the split into different eras of the history of the Hanse, e.g. early Hanseatic trade in the high Middle Ages, the late medieval Hanse or the Hanseatic League in early modern times. All these fields have naturally created their own pictures of the Hanse and the Hanseatic League, and will certainly continue to do so.’ What is more crucial is that in many of these concepts the economic dimension of both the Hanse and the Hanseatic League was only of marginal importance. Although there has never been a phase in which the economic aspect (or more precisely: Hanseatic trade) was totally neglected, it would nevertheless be exciting to examine the whole of Hanse research to ascertain the extent to which economics appeared in any of these images.* With the following analysis can thus only central milestones of Hanse research be touched upon. Of course, a more detailed investigation would be necessary to examine all other non-scientific trends and interests’, whose impact on scientific research into the Hanse were also of considerable significance.

A connection with contemporary desires and hopes is particularly obvious in the beginnings of scientific research into the Hanseatic League in the nineteenth century, especially with regard to the establishment of the Hansischer Geschichtsverein (Hanseatic History Association) in 1870.° The long-desired German national unity, which had finally been realised in 1871, was in a sense imported into the medieval world of the Hanseatic League, which then took on the appearance of a powerful union of cities whose naval power protected the interests of the German Empire in the North. Had the older, romantically inspired research already been lacking in an approach to the sheer economic power embodied by the medieval Hanseatic League’, after 1871 the economic history potential was finally and completely buried under a political, legal and constitutional view.

Cf. HoLBachH et al. (eds.) 2011.

Cf. SCHWEBEL 1964, p. 15; PosTEL 1996.

NWA OH RW

It was primarily Dietrich SCHAFER (1845-1929) who was responsible for such non-economic understanding of the Hanseatic League.* His role can be deemed inappropriate when one considers that his nationalist-monarchist views would automatically have given rise to scientific backwardness. His scientific stance, which did not even take into account economic, social and cultural history, is also misunderstood if it is only presented as a result of the narrow-mindedness of a bourgeois theorist, because SCHAFER, being the son of a Bremen docker, was very well acquainted with the world of trade and with life in a seaport. In his autobiography he touchingly describes how he grew up in a cellar bar at the harbour and played between the goods shipped from all over the world.’ Such socialisation is virtually unique among medievalists of the same generation", and such life experience can also very rarely be found among Hanse historians, the only parallel being the biography of Karl KoprpmMann (1839-1905), who was the son of a Hamburg butcher and failed his entire life to obtain a professorship.!! Both historians of the Hanseatic League became interested in the subject through the famous Göttingen historian Georg Warrz (1813-1886). SCHÄFER had, however, already come to Gottingen in 1871 with the intent of completing a prize essay on “The German Hanse Towns and King Waldemar of Denmark”, a task set the previous year by the Hansischer Geschichtsverein. A careful examination of the resulting 1879 publication reveals that although it mainly concentrates on foreign policy aspects of the matter, it also contains economic, social and cultural history passages of striking density. SCHAFER had a deep knowledge of the Hanse’s economic history, as attested to in his introduction to the edition of the “Buch des Liibeckischen Vogts

»13 or his commitment to the Sound Toll Registers.'* It was, auf Schonen therefore, not the result of his ignorance to the shaping power of economic conditions when he emphatically pointed Hanse research in another direction. In his memoirs, SCHAFER retrospectively describes his stance, which

8 Cf. Prrz 1996; ACKERMANN 2004.

10 Cf. vom BRUCH 1980.

14 Ulf Christian Ewert and Stephan Selzer - 9783631661833 Heruntergeladen von PubFactory am05/16/2018 01:20:11PM via Peter Lang AG clearly shows the influence of Heinrich von TREITSCHKE (1834-1896). In an almost regretful tone he notes: “It was my involvement with the history of the Hanseatic League that initially led me to scientifically sophisticated studies. Its very nature has a great deal to do with economic matters; it is concerned with the activities of citizens.”'® Yet, for some reason, this economic dimension is not the focus of his historical efforts: “But it is particularly the study of Hanse history which defined my conviction that the permanent size and welfare of nations are based on the health and might of its state life.” 17 For him the focus of historical consideration must be the history of state action in which the Hanseatic League acted as a union of towns and a substitute of the German empire in the North. Or in SCHÄFER’S own words: “As if the state were not the highest product of all culture, which has up to now been the centre of historical research and publication, and which must always remain so [...]”.!® His decision to give priority to the constitutional and political history of the Hanseatic League was not due to limited research time. For SCHAFER, economic success was merely a direct consequence of state power. In his 1885 essay “The Hanse and its Trade Policy”, he came to the programmatic conclusion which he quoted once again in his 1926 autobiography: “Like all other mercantile states, the history of the Hanse teaches us that economic size can only be achieved and maintained through political power.”!? The economic success of the Hanseatic League in the North and in the Baltic was thus not

15 Cf. LANGER 1998.

16 SCHAFER 1926, p. 100: ,,Beschaftigung mit der Geschichte der Hanse hatte mich zuerst zum wissenschaftlichen ausgereiften Arbeiten gefiihrt. Sie hat sich ihrer Art nach besonders viel mit wirtschaftlichen Dingen zu beschäftigen; es handelt sich um Betätigung von Bürgern.“

19 SCHÄFER 1926, p. 101: „Auch die Geschichte der Hanse lehrt wie die aller anderen merkantilen Staatenbildungen, daß wirtschaftliche Größe nur zu erringen und zu behaupten ist durch politische Macht.“ Cf. also SCHÄFER 1913, vol. 1, pp. 168-193.

caused by more clever economic strategies, more efficient trading practices or cheaper transport opportunities, but was instead a result of its political power.”° However, was it possible to expand this field of research if the source material about the domestic and foreign policy of the Hanseatic League was edited and evaluated? SCHAFER resolutely rejected this thought, too. In 1908, in a lecture given at Lübeck, he strictly did not recommend the synchronous integration of additional dimensions into Hanse history, but plead, in full accordance with the political and military developments in the years before World War I, for a diachronic expansion of a political history of German maritime and naval power up to present day.”

The impact of this pronounced state cult, which not only affected SCHAFER’s historical research around 1900”, was not restricted to the analysis of the Hanseatic League. It followed from the inaugural lecture he gave in Tübingen in 1888”, and it finally resulted in a conflict with Eberhard GOTHEIN (1853-1923), who is now seen as one of the founding fathers of national economics in Germany, even though he always considered himself to be a historian.” It seems necessary to take a look at this controversy, which is less known than the famous methodological dispute of the 1890s between Karl LAMPRECHT on one side and Max WEBER, Friedrich MEI- NECKE and Georg von BELow on the other”, but had a far greater influence on Hanse research. Since then it was not just the contact to cultural history which was blocked for Hanse history, but in particular contact to research into economic history was also almost completely lost. This diversion of Hanse history and economic history occurred at the time when the Jüngere Historische Schule der Nationalökonomie (Younger Historical

21 Cf. SCHAFER 1909.

22 See for instance HAMMERSTEIN (ed.) 1988; OEXLE 2002.

23 Cf. Dietrich SCHÄFER, Das eigentliche Arbeitsgebiet der Geschichte [1888], in: SCHAFER 1913, vol. 1, pp. 264-290.

24 Cf. GOTHEIN 1889, and the reaction of Dietrich SCHÄFER, Geschichte und Kulturgeschichte [1891], in SCHAFER 1913, vol. 1, pp. 291-351. Cf. also SCHAFER 1926, p. 113 f.

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School of National Economics) enjoyed its greatest respect in Germany.” Its methodically controlled work on historical source material resulted in high quality economic historical research, such as GOTHEIN’s “ Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Schwarzwalds” (“Economic History of the Black Forest”, 1892).?8 However, a Hanse history in the sense propagated by Schäfer was not receptive to the likes of this. So it is not surprising that Gustav SCHMOLLER (1838-1917), the head of the Jiingere Historische Schule der Nationalökonomie”, sided with GOTHEIN, while SCHMOLLER’s declared adversary Georg von BELow (1858-1927)°° became one of SCHAFER’s sympathisers.*!

Yet, how fruitful such cooperation of economic history in the spirit of the Jüngere Historische Schule der Nationalökonomie and of Hanse research might have been can be seen in the case of the few historians who attempted this kind of approach. These include Wilhelm StiepA (1852-1933), historian of the famous Veckinchusen family, who was a trained national economist.* It also has to be mentioned that the first tenured professorship for economic history in Germany was given to Bruno Kuske (1876-1964) in Cologne, even though his interest was primarily in the history of Cologne and not in the history of the Hanseatic League.” Despite the fact that no genuine Hanse topics were dealt with in the Kuske School, another medievalist with a deep knowledge of national economics provided an extremely vitalising impetus for Hanse research in the direction of economic history. At his grandfather’s upper middle-class Berlin home, Heinrich SPROEM- BERG (1889-1966)*4 had met Gustav SCHMOLLER in person and was truly impressed. Although he completed his doctorate under the supervision of Dietrich SCHÄFER in Berlin, he was actually more interested in the history of Western Europe, which led to his close links with the Belgian historian, Henri PrRENNE (1862-1935). In 1917, Germany’s war policy in Belgium

28 Cf. GOTHEIN 1892.

29 Cf. Bock et al. (eds.) 1989.

31 Cf. CYMOREK 1998, p. 159; ACKERMANN 2004, pp. 99-121. 32 On his life see STIEDA 1921.

34 Cf. DIDCZUNEIT / UNGER / MIDDELL 1994.

17 Ulf Christian Ewert and Stephan Selzer - 9783631661833 Heruntergeladen von PubFactory am05/16/2018 01:20:11PM via Peter Lang AG then caused a split between Heinrich SPROEMBERG and Dietrich SCHAFER. SCHAFER openly assured SPROEMBERG that SPROEMBERG would never obtain a professorship in Germany.’ Ironically, it was this role as a ‘maverick’ within the German medieval history scene that motivated SPROEMBERG to join the Hansischer Geschichtsverein in 1921 following the advice of SCHAFER’s master student Walter VOGEL (1880-1938).** Nevertheless, in the period after World War II SPROEMBERG became very influential in the economic history of the Hanseatic League after he had received a professorship in Rostock in 1946. The works on social and economic history subjects which he initiated over the following years are numerous, but of all of these only Karl-Friedrich OLECHNOWITZ’s study of the shipbuilding industry is mentioned here.*’ In 1950, SPROEMBERG moved on to Leipzig University. He became head of the Hanseatic Working Group in the German Democratic Republic in the same year°®, and later also a member of the board of the Hansischer Geschichtsverein, which he had to re-join after having been forced out in 1938 for being politically unacceptable in the Nazi era.” It is symptomatic that Heinrich SPROEMBERG was unable to become professionally successful in a scientific milieu in which Dietrich SCHAFER was so powerful and exerted so much influence.

Nevertheless, in the 1920s there was a determined embracing of the economic history of the Hanseatic League.*° This new approach is closely associated with Fritz RÖRIG (1882-1952) and his students.*! RÖRIG himself wrote reflectively of his course, milestones and goals:** In his view he developed his concept of the history of the Hanseatic League on two fronts. On the one hand, he considered SCHAFER’s idea of the political history of the Hanseatic League to be inappropriate, and, after 1918, also outdated. On the other hand, however, he agreed just as little with the economic history approach of the national economists Karl BUCHER (1847-1930) and

35 Cf. SPROEMBERG 1971, p. 437, footnote 212.

37 Cf. OLECHNOWITZ 1960.

38 See to the resarch on Hanseatic history in the GDR MULLER-MERTENS 2011. 39 Cf. DIDCZUNEIT / UNGER / MIDDELL 1994 (eds.), pp. 34 and 47.

41 On Rörıg’s intellectual biography see SELZER 2016a.

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Werner SOMBART (1863-1941)*, in whose thinking medieval foreign trade seems to be unimportant, and the world of the merchant all too narrow. RÖRIG was, however, able to refute these approaches with the help of the archives of the city of Lübeck. There, he discovered the medieval foreign traders in Hanse historiography, and there he found important source material to construct an economically based history of the Hanseatic League. He was less interested in business cycles and statistics, as he found “the people who drove the economy, their contexts and organisational forms, far more important [...] than the goods they sold.”** His student Ahasver von BRANDT (1909-1977)* incorporated all the findings from ROrIG’s time into his 1963 essay “The Hanse as a Medieval Economic Organisation”.* In a reversal of SCHAFER’s premises he reiterated that: “The political, also power-political, activity of the League is not an end in itself [...], but a means to secure the economic concerns.”*”

When Ahasver von BRANDT took stock of the 40 years of RORIG’s paradigm shift, not much was known of these issues outside the closer scientific community. This, not untypical, phase shift in the progress of new scientific approaches to a broader professional public was particularly due to the fact that Fritz RÖRIG had failed to write an overall view of Hanse history. The standard work by Karl Pacer (1898-1974), published in 1942 and reprinted several times since then, was still the aggregate of SCHÄFER’s image of the Hanse. Things started to change when Philippe DOLLINGER’s (1904-1999) “La Hanse” was published in Paris in 1964. The German translation that appeared in 1966 soon became standard reading on the subject.*® The contradictory structure of these two works, which describe the

43 Cf. LENGER 1995.

44 RÖRIG 1950, p. 393: For him the economic agents, their interactions and forms of organisation are much more important than the goods they exchange (,,[...] die Wirtschaft treibenden Menschen, ihre Zusammenhänge und Organisationsformen, ungleich wichtiger [...] als die von ihnen umgesetzten Güter“).

45 Cf. FRIEDLAND 1979.

48 Cf. DOLLINGER °2012.

19 Ulf Christian Ewert and Stephan Selzer - 9783631661833 Heruntergeladen von PubFactory am05/16/2018 01:20:11PM via Peter Lang AG fault line between SCHAFER’s and RörıG’s outlines of Hanse history, was substantial and was shrewdly commented on in a review of both works in 1965: “And while in PAGEL’s perception, Hanse history is anything but just town history or even just economic history, for DOLLINGER it is primarily an ‘economic history’ phenomenon”.* This notwithstanding, by the time von BRANDT’s essay and DOLLINGER’s Hanse volume appeared, Ernst Pitz (1928-2009) had already diagnosed a crisis in historical research on the Hanseatic League. He clearly stated that “as well as a general blurring of the boundaries of Hanse research”, a key problem was that the “dialogue between historians and national economists broke down as a result of disinterest in economics during the Nazi era and the switch from economic science to economic theory that we experienced after 1945.”°°

Following the dispute (Methodenstreit) between the Austrian Economic School (Wiener Grenznutzenschule) led by Carl MENGER (1840-1921) and the Historical School led by Gustav SCHMOLLER, it soon became clear that the German avenue of historical economics was something that was not going to be followed at an international level.*! The reorientation of economic methodology as it emerged after 1945 meant an increased mathematisation of the field, which had to operate on the exclusion of problems and limitation of the scope of research in order to be successful.’ One can argue that this is why there is a certain tragedy in the convergence of Hanse research with economic phenomena promoted by RÖRIG, because precisely this opened up the field for a historical approach to economics, which nevertheless failed to succeed internationally. His economic re-alignment of Hanse research came up against a general de-historicising trend in eco-

49 SCHMIDT 1965, p. 115 f.: „Und während für Pagels Empfinden hansische Geschichte ‚alles andere’ ist ‚als nur eine Städtegeschichte oder gar nur Wirtschaftsgeschichte’, ist sie für Dollinger eben gerade ein in erster Linie ‚wirtschaftsgeschichtliches Phänomen’ “.

50 Pırz 1961, pp. 259 and 261: „Verwischung der Grenzen historischer Forschung“ sowie „Gespräch zwischen Historikern und Nationalökonomen durch das Desinteresse der Nazizeit an der Wirtschaftslehre und die 1945 auch bei uns hervorgetretene Umstellung der Wirtschaftswissenschaften auf die Wirtschaftstheorie abgerissen ist.“

52 Cf. WINKEL 41994; BORCHARDT 2001.

nomics. And it was this separation of both methods and subjects that also caused the current problems within the dialogue between medievalists, who generally consider the categories used by economists as too rigid and out of touch with the everyday life of the past, and economists, who vice versa consider historians to be naive amateurish collectors of facts who think that common sense is a method.

In the 1960s, the renewal of economic history mainly in the Anglo Saxon world centred on models and quantification. As the necessity to use theory for scientific explanation was stressed, this ‘New Economic History’ was clearly designed to meet the needs of economics. And it was in particular Cliometrics’? that deepened the gulf between economists and medievalists even more. Thus, in the words of Arnold Escu, one gets the impression that there are two economic histories, depending on whether the respective researcher has a historiographical or an economics background.**

New Institutional Economics and the Hanse - a Challenge

One might say that breaking the link to economic theory is fundamental for medieval studies in the German language, with the result being that medieval economic issues are only of minor importance.” In favour of Hanse research, one could say that this field, when compared to others, has always been accessible for suggestions from economic history. Based on this tradition, one could hope that a newer economic theoretical framework and methodology would be met with interest by Hanse researchers.