The two powers in the Middle Ages that expanded eastward and northward were the Teutonic Order and the Hanseatic League.
The Hanseatic League of German cities required no religious pretexts. It represents one of the finest communal endeavors in German history. Among the non-German cities of the North Sea and the Baltic, including those of Sweden, Denmark and Lithuania, it was above all in London that the countinghouse of the Hanseatic League wielded great power. In England the Germans had once been called “Merchants of the Emperor”; now the German “Hansards” were given special privileges. They had their own courts, and their Guild Hall was granted far-reaching privileges. England was so dependent upon Hanseatic capital that Edward III was for some time compelled to pawn the British crown with the merchants of the City of Dortmund. The League continued to flourish for two hundred years.
It was the first and—until the rise of the modern steamship lines—the only time in German history that the German spirit of enterprise ventured out into the world independently of the State without making any more enemies than is usual with those who meet with success. The League had no patron and its own weapons were used only for defense. It was a trading company that sought to win neither souls nor territory. Yet in the cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck it had three little republics right in the German Reich—with no solemn statutes, but with a common currency, a common system of weights and measures, and common customs duties. Aside from the Swiss Confederacy, the Hanseatic League has remained the only free association of German citizens that needed neither princes nor crowns to achieve world-wide scope. Both the Swiss and the Hansards proved to the world that the Germans were sufficiently endowed by nature to govern themselves with peace and success.
But the German character could not tolerate any kind of freedom for long. In these two instances there was a response to internationalism that differed markedly from the usual German reaction. But then, the Swiss and the Hansards together made up but a bare tenth of the German people, and they have remained exceptional in Germany to this very day. Even today people from Zurich or Hamburg often marvel at the Prussian tone which has divided all Germany into voices that command and those that obey. They rarely grumble about it any more, but they smile.
7
THE CITY was a Burg, a walled fort, and thus the citizens were called “burghers.” Walls were to the city what armor was to the knight. How could the burghers have slept soundly without walls and towers, arms, pitch and stones! The Emperor had no standing army nor, for the most part, money; the princes had both, and misused them; the high clergy kept to the safety of their own cities and castles; and the highways were infested with knights, in large bands and small, some on forays from their castles, others impoverished bandits and highwaymen. This state of affairs characterized not merely the Interregnum. The German chronicles from every part of the Reich are full of it. Amid such anarchy every merchant traveling on the highway, as well as every city, was constantly exposed to attack. To get a clear picture of conditions in Germany between 1100 and 1300, one needs only to cast a glance at present-day Europe, where highwaymen, armed to the teeth, attack and rob their less well protected and wealthier neighbors without reason or warning.
The German cities became the birthplace of handicraft. Germans must always form groups; and, in Freytag’s words, “the whole nation is composed of many such groups.” These naturally grew strongest where co-operation afforded the greatest protection—among soldiers and craftsmen. Here too, since courage was not of the essence, skill and hard work, vision and persistence distinguished the Germans. The blacksmiths and brass founders, the workers in copper and gold, produced objects of surpassing beauty and utility, and the craftsmanship of skilled German workers is still shown today in the grinding of fine lenses and the accuracy of German chemical preparations. Today their skill is harnessed to those industries that still require handwork; but at that time they went in for art.
A powerful solidarity, nevertheless, held the classes together in the early German cities. In addition to the old merchant families who even today, in Roman fashion, call themselves Patricians, the city councils gradually took in craftsmen. Free city government, one of the finest chapters in German history, endured for centuries, surrendering only in our own days to an all-powerful party.
The two urban classes that faced each other—each with its own organizational pyramid—were the guilds of merchants and craftsmen respectively. The modern corporate State, so called, is but an old-fashioned imitation of these associations, then most highly developed in Germany. The craftsman might be free, as far as the prince or the bishop were concerned; but he was bound to his fellows. The German predilection for authority and submission, which stems from ancient Teutonic habits of war service and makes Germany the ideal bureaucracy and dictatorship, demanded discipline and organization as soon as free men combined into a class.
The German burgher—merchant or craftsman—could not but feel helpless in political life, since for more than a thousand years the nobility had excluded him from any part in political leadership. The habit of obedience to authority naturally led to the desire for a leader in his own limited circle—someone to whom responsibility and guidance could be left. If he himself was only given an office in his new association, possibly with authority over a few of his colleagues, he was quite willing to acknowledge those that were placed above him. The Germans have always envisioned social life in the form of a pyramid, as exemplified in the hierarchy of king, prince, nobility and gentry. And this now became the pattern for countless small pyramids in the rise of the medieval cities. The craftsman in his guild was content to haul the dead weight of his superiors, if only he was able to have a share in the pressing down on those beneath him. In the primeval forests the Germans had known no other occupation than to hunt and wage war, leaving the care of land and stock to their womenfolk and slaves. Now, from the very start, they learned to tolerate, even to seek, authority and submission. And in later ages they grew to love order more than freedom. The German guilds of craftsmen and merchants clung to their own customs and laws to an extent that seems ridiculous, and they stubbornly continued to uphold the warrior virtues of obedience and discipline in their civilian professions. At the same time their diligence and modesty were exemplary.
In Basle, Rudolf of Hapsburg once stopped to chat with a grimy tanner engaged in his unappetizing work. The artisan invited the sovereign to call at his home the next day at noon. To his amazement the King found his host living in a sumptuous house, where the tanner and his wife, dressed in finery, were expecting their royal visitor at a table set with silver. “If you are so rich,” the King asked during the meal, “why are you engaged in such dirty work?”
“It is my work,” the man replied, “that has given me this house.”
At the time, in the fourteenth century, the attitude of the kings toward the rising cities had already undergone a change. In their fights with the bishops, the kings now often turned to the burghers who shared this enmity toward the episcopate. In the struggles between the princes too the cities became factors to be reckoned with; on one occasion they actually decided a royal election.
In the early days the great cities themselves produced everything their citizens required. There were then actually more cities manufacturing cloth than there are today. But specialization soon set in, adding to the radius of capital. Bruges in Lower Germany, the greatest international trading-center in the West, established close contact with the large cities along the Middle Rhine. The citizens of Augsburg and Ratisbon