A Companion to Medieval Lübeck by Carsten Jahnke

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Companion to Medieval Lübeck by Carsten Jahnke Sybil Jack Jahnke, Carsten, ed., A Companion to Medieval Lübeck (Brill's Companions to European History, 18), Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2019; cloth; pp. xx, 413; R.R.P. €162.00; ISBN 9789004380684. This book must be wholeheartedly recommended to anyone working on medieval urban history. It fills an amazing gap in historical studies in English about the World Heritage Site the city of Lübeck. It provides an invaluable introduction to recent scholarship about many aspects of this leading Hanseatic city in the Middle Ages, each section written by an expert in that topic. The many different [End Page 227] sides of its extensive city life, from housing to religion, are investigated with the assistance of immaculate images of the layout of the city. The painstaking recreation of buildings long destroyed in war and conflict and the practices of the different religious orders creates a visible background to the life of the city in the period. The identification of the long-destroyed buildings and fortifications within which the burghers spent their time gives a new impression of the context of the distinctive, if rigid, social life of Lübeckers at all levels. While its editor denies that the book sets out to be a master narrative, the authors of each of the different sections achieve a new, all embracing international overview of their different subjects. They examine the city in the wider historical context of the social and geographical area and achieve a remarkable depth of information about many of the crucial elements of its history, so making possible a precise comparison with major maritime cities elsewhere in Europe such as Venice and Marseille. The recovery of much of the substantial Lubeck archives, which had been dispersed in World War II to a range of safe places from which they have only recently been returned, has enabled scholars to undertake considerable revision of the account established in Helmold von Bosau's medieval chronicle, which had long been accepted as the classical account of the area. The combination of recent painstaking archaeological and historical investigation with reconsideration of the art, music, and philosophy of the area has permitted a revised account of critical elements of the previously largely neglected local life of the residents. Another important aspect of Lübeck's history examined here, which is so often neglected in histories of medieval cities, is the role of religious institutions. The study of the long-lasting conflict between city and clergy that occasionally became violent is set beside the social profile of an episcopate that had a largely burgher background. The struggle of the city to control nomination to clerical positions in their local churches is an element of the culture which has been for the first time in English properly incorporated in an analysis of the government of this imperial city. The wide range of topics covered means that there is somewhat less consideration of the subjects that usually dominate urban studies, such as the economic underpinning of the imperial city and the administrative working of its governing Council. However, the sections examining the function of the city in providing support for the residents and those living in its geographical hinterland, who from the start needed salt herring for survival, make the ruling economic structure clear. The sections examining the growth of an integrated trade system linking the Baltic to the north and various cities to the south show the differences between a city on the Baltic and one on the Mediterranean. These differences, nevertheless, did not obliterate the cultural function of Lübeck as a vital source of artistic and musical inspiration for the Baltic area. The chapter on the artist Hermen Rode, about whom so little is securely known, establishes the impact he and his fellow artist Berndt Notke had on the development of art in the Baltic [End Page 228] region. The careful dissection of the architectural development of the city reveals for the first time the way in which the local architects developed their own unique style and design, suited to the environment. Jahnke's final chapter on the role of the confraternities in...