Lübeck: die Entstehung von Stadt und Hafen im Lichte neuer archäologischer Erkenntnisse

Abstract

Early urban elements are already found in Lübeck’s Late Slavic predecessor settlement, Alt Lübeck: a ring-wall settlement as the centre of power, a craftsmen's community in the suburbium and a port with a merchants' colony. The foundation of German Lübeck nevertheless represents more than a mere shifting of the settlement’s location. Quite to the contrary, it is closely linked with the Slavic settlement structure which had been in existence for many centuries on the city’s highest elevation. This structure had consisted of a ring-wall settlement and a large suburbium - which had become quite palpable in the late period -, a long-distance trade route and a landing place for ships. Beginning in 1143, under the protection of the count, it was further developed and restructured by the German "founders" as a multipart port and market community in the early urban phase, now locatable on the Western ridge. Through its second founding in 1159, Lübeck became a town in the legal sense. After 1181, the political, economic and constitutional expansion into a fully developed town was accompanied by successive further settlement and topographical development. Domestic autonomy was followed in 1226 by the status of free imperial town. Nor is the layout of the streets and plots of land merely the consequence of a foundation concept: The street system evolved from an older long-distance trade route. Beginning in 1143, its cross axes were gradually developed to completion, particularly after the foreign merchants' portside market ceased operation in 1217. According to D. Ellmers, the latter event is to be seen against the background of the reorganisation of trade in Northern Europe, which resulted in a new type of port settlement. As regards residential building forms, the wooden post-andstandard construction with a large hall was joined in the second half of the twelfth century by wooden "caminata" or "stoneworks" (heatable or non-heatable tower-like constructions) as well as the "Saalgeschosshaus" (multi-storied stone building which comprised a large hall on the first upper floor and served as a residence for members of the upper social classes). The brick house so strongly associated with Lübeck was not developed until the second half of the thirteenth century as a result of trade in mass goods. In Lübeck the development from proto-urban Slavic roots to a German port and market community and, finally, to a fully developed town and leading Hansa city progressed in stages, and was anything but a static act of foundation. Rather, it involved unsuspected changes in the topography and the structures of the land plots and their constructional development against the background of economic transformations.