Hanseatic Culture and Art in Western Pomeranian Towns

The Hanseatic League was primarily a community of merchants engaged in long-distance trade. Western Pomerania was the Baltic coastal region with the highest number of members in this union, which included the following urban centers: Białogard, Darłowo, Goleniów, Gryfice, Kamień, Kołobrzeg, Koszalin, Sławno, Słupsk, Stargard, Szczecin, Trzebiatów, and Wolin. Their participation in Hanseatic life was primarily linked to activity in Scandinavian markets during the second half of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, where they mainly exported grain and imported fish. This had a fundamental impact on the development of these towns, which participated less actively in trade contacts with Flanders, England, Prussia, or Livonia. Merchants and skippers from Szczecin, Kołobrzeg, Darłowo, and Słupsk appeared in those ports only sporadically.

An important aspect of the activity of Pomeranian centers within the Hanseatic League was their participation in diets (*Tagfahrt*). Their greatest intensity coincided with the Hanseatic war against King Valdemar IV Atterdag of Denmark, in which Szczecin, Kołobrzeg, and Stargard marked their presence. They participated in concluding the truce in 1364 and the peace with the Danish king in 1365. Following the defeat at Helsingborg, Szczecin, Kołobrzeg, and Stargard intended to withdraw from the war. Ultimately, however, they joined the fight against the Danes, and Stralsund even made an attempt to incorporate Goleniów into the alliance. The participation of Szczecin, Kołobrzeg, and Stargard in concluding the Peace of Stralsund in 1370 was also linked to their involvement in the occupation of castles along the Sound strait and the ratification of the truce with Norway. In 1376, these same towns participated in the conclusion of peace between the Hanseatic League and the King of Norway. Following these events, which placed a heavy financial burden on the aforementioned Pomeranian urban centers, only Szczecin appeared—albeit rarely—at the diets. Stargard and Kołobrzeg withdrew from participating in the political life of the League.

At the end of the 14th century, the Hanseatic merchants admonished the towns of Kołobrzeg, Słupsk, Trzebiatów, Koszalin, Darłowo, Białogard, Wolin, and Gryfice for producing barrels that were too small, which were intended for packing and transporting herring in Scania. The high activity of Pomeranian centers in Scania led to their participation in forming military contingents directed against piracy in the Baltic Sea. Joint units were fielded by: Szczecin, Stargard, Goleniów, Gardziec, Gryfino, and Kamień, as well as Kołobrzeg, Darłowo, Słupsk, Trzebiatów, Gryfice, and Wolin.

Numerous trade contacts and social mobility oscillating around the Baltic Sea led to the emergence of a common culture, to which the Hanseatic League also contributed. The most significant contribution to its creation and persistence was made by towns which, through the complexity of their social structures and material culture, became important creators and transmitters of culture and art, including monumental brick architecture. Their citizens, recruited from various urban strata such as merchants, clergy, and artisans, played important roles in this endeavor. Before this happened, however, as early as the first half of the 13th century, architectural concepts applied, among others, in the cathedral in Kamień and the Cistercian church in Kołbacz reached Pomerania from the regions of today’s central and northern Germany. This came about through the building foundations of Henry the Lion in Ratzeburg, Lübeck, and Brunswick. The so-called thick-wall technique used in the cathedral in Kamień could have made its way to Pomerania via the cathedrals in Hamburg and Bremen. For the earliest phase of construction of the Kołbacz church, which may have fallen as early as the late 12th century, Danish architecture and workshops had a significant influence.

The most monumental architecture linked to Baltic Sea monuments is associated with Pomeranian urban centers. In the architecture of mendicant orders, connections can be seen with church layouts known from Elbląg, Chełmno, or Toruń, which is visible in the Dominican church in Kamień (after 1308), which has not survived but is known from archaeological research. The Augustinian hermits in Stargard erected their own temple (around 1300), which also no longer survives, in a style similar to the Dominican churches in Stralsund and Prenzlau.

Parish churches in Pomeranian towns, emerging in the late 13th century and successfully realized throughout the 14th and even the 15th century, were built as hall churches. They were characterized by three-aisled naves and single-aisled, elongated chancels. The collegiate church in Kołobrzeg became a symbol of this construction program. It was applied in a number of architectural projects that have survived to this day in their original or rebuilt form. These include the churches in Trzebiatów, Gryfice, Nowogard, Resko, Chociwel, Goleniów, Wolin, and Stargard (the phase preceding the basilican system). Their architecture was influenced by solutions applied in mendicant order churches and the hall-type parish churches of Hanseatic towns. St. Mary’s Church and St. James’s Church in Lübeck remained a source of inspiration.

The quintessence of the development of Late Gothic sacred architecture in Hanseatic Pomeranian towns was represented by the hall-type parish church in Szczecin and the basilican church in Stargard. In St. Szczecin’s Church of St. James, the construction of a choir with an ambulatory was undertaken, which in the late 14th century was an innovative spatial solution applied for a short time in the region of Brandenburg. Meanwhile, Stargard’s response to the building endeavors of the people of Szczecin was the reconstruction of St. Mary’s Church in a basilican form, featuring an ambulatory chancel and two-level chapels. It ultimately acquired not only the mass already described, but a central St. Mary’s Chapel was erected on the northern side, along with a two-tower western block. The Stargard model became a source of spatial inspiration not only for projects arising in Pomerania, such as the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Szczecin or St. John’s Church in Stargard. Ceramic and glazed decorations of lesenes with tracery and gablets can be found not only in sacred architecture but also in the town halls of Szczecin, Kamień, and Trzebiatów. A true export “commodity” became the motif of the so-called “Stargard blind arcade” (*blenda*) from the northern tower of St. Mary’s parish church, which traveled from Pomerania in a more or less reduced form all the way to the Danish islands.

In turn, the influence of Lübeck’s architecture became apparent not only in sacred architecture, but also in secular buildings. The most striking example of this is the town hall in Kołobrzeg—which has not survived in that form, but is known from Matthäus Merian’s 1652 cityscape—enclosed on the market square side by a monumental, partially openwork gable. This element, known from the town hall in Lübeck, made its way to Kołobrzeg likely through a similar realization in Stralsund. From Lübeck and other Hanseatic towns, the model of the hall-type burgher house with a storage area was adopted; most of these were destroyed in Pomeranian towns during the last World War. Their rebuilt narrow facades, decorated with axial portals, wide windows, and blinded gables, can be admired in Stargard, Kołobrzeg, and Trzebiatów.

Baltic connections are also visible in medieval sculpture that once filled the interiors of Pomeranian churches. Initially, Gothic stone sculpture from Gotland was sought after, which has survived to this day in the form of columns from Kołbacz and capitals from Nowogard and Szadzko (currently in the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin). A similar import route was taken by numerous recorded limestone baptismal fonts, for example from Wrzosowo and Lubiana (now in the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin). Not only finished works of art but also raw stone material were imported from Gotland and Öland. It was used to make tombstones, threshold stones, crosses, steles, and architectural details. Evidence of this practice includes surviving tombstones in, among others, the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Szczecin and St. Mary’s Church in Trzebiatów. The boundary stone between Goleniów and Szczecin from 1635—originally a reconciliation (penitential) cross—the thanksgiving stone of Lupold von Wedel in Krępcewo, reconciliation stones in Stargard and Trzebiatów, as well as the limestone plinths and slabs used in the construction of parish churches in Trzebiatów and Stargard, all share a similar character.

Starting from the first half of the 14th century, the development of wood carving and artistic metalcasting in Pomerania was influenced by North German centers, with Lübeck at the forefront. Examples of bronze works include the sanctuary knockers (*antabs*) from Szczecin and Kołobrzeg, the crucifix from Stargard (currently in the collection of the Society of Christ for Poles Residing Abroad in Poznań), and the monumental candelabrum from the collegiate church in Kołobrzeg, all of which are linked to the craftsmanship of Jan Apengeter’s workshop, active in Lübeck and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the monumental, late Gothic Stargard polyptych, crafted around 1450 and showing connections to Mecklenburger sculpture, among others, remains unmatched in Pomerania.

An example of late medieval devotion, shared by Hanseatic towns, is found in the material traces of the pilgrimage movement. These primarily include pewter-lead pilgrim badges and shells that served as testimony to completed pilgrimages. Pomeranian town books, testaments, and burgher donations provide information about planned or fulfilled journeys to the Holy Land, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, and local sanctuaries such as Góra Chełmska near Koszalin, Binowo, Żabowo, Osieki, Rowokół, and Polanów. Pilgrim tokens discovered in Szczecin, Kołobrzeg, Stargard, and Kamień bear witness to the religious travels of their citizens to Santiago de Compostela, Rome, Cologne, Gottsbüren, Maastricht, Stromberg, and Wilsnack.

The daily material culture of Pomeranian towns in the Late Middle Ages included ceramics imported from the Rhineland, Lower Saxony, Lusatia, Saxony, northern Germany, Denmark, England, the Netherlands, and France. Stoneware jugs, which were used for serving beverages, formed the most popular assortment. Metal costume elements discovered during archaeological excavations also bear the common features of Hanseatic burgher culture. These include lead-tin belt appliqués, buckles, clasps, and badges. An example of the refined taste of late medieval Pomeranian burghers is provided by the elements of a hoard discovered in Szczecin’s Old Town in 1999. It consists of, among other things, over three hundred silver, frequently gilded ornaments, including costume elements created between the 14th and 15th centuries. These have numerous analogies in deposits discovered in Northern Europe. In turn, among the coins recorded in the hoard, there were specimens from Hanseatic towns such as Anklam, Greifswald, Stralsund, Rostock, Hamburg, and Lübeck.

Pomeranian towns and their inhabitants participated in the late medieval Hanseatic culture. Examples of this include architecture, sculpture, painting, and craftsmanship, which we know not only from archival records but also from objects that have fortunately survived to this day. These are testimonies of magnificent sacred and secular architecture in towns where brick was the primary building material, along with other elements of material culture, including those uncovered during archaeological research and carefully preserved in museums. They reveal the strong contacts connecting Hanseatic towns, which stemmed from social and economic similarities, including the functions of art and culture.

More:

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Philippe Dollinger, Dzieje Hanzy XII-XVII w., Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Morskie 1997.

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Marcin Majewski