The Reformation inthe Hanseatic Cities” , in:The Sixteenth Century Journal XIV,4 (1983)

Heinz Schilling*

University of Giessen

 

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The impressive discussion of the German urban reformation, in whichAmerican scholars have participated with admirable pieces of research,focuses on the south and southwest German imperial cities. North andnorthwest German towns have not attracted a similar interest fromReformation historians. At least subconsciously there seemed to exist a commonopinion that the bright light of the non-authoritarian elements of theReformation could not appear in the cloudy and misty districts of the North,thatthey could reach their ultimatesplendor only in the cultivated, intellectuallymore lively urban centers of the South. The Reformation as "an urbanevent" took place south of the river Main. The North appears in thefamousbook of Bernd Moeller and inProfessor Dickens's excellent synopsis TheGerman Reformation and Martin Luther as "slow-moving areas,"slowmoving because there was a lackof burghers' commitment to Reformationideas and consequently an absence of the dynamics of urban reformation.'Especially in the Westphalian towns the Reformation-as Professor Dickenssays- "began late and made slow progress; moreover, it seems to havebeenless a religious than ademocratic and social movement." These movementswere often initiated by anticlericalism, which was "at the bottomeconomic,not religious."' In BerndMoeller's early interpretation, the cities in theNorth were rather marginal because in his opinion they wereintellectuallyand culturally far less livelythan the South German cities and less preparedfor the new religious message.

As in the territorial towns in general, in theHanseatic Cities "the new movement could only rise with thepermission ofthe princes." The maindefects of the territorial cities that excluded themfrom urban Reformation movements of the imperial city type were,according to Moeller, the lack of external political autonomy and of communalinstitutions in their domestic structure.

Two decades of detailed research stimulated by his splendid essayImperial Cities and the Reformation have shown that this picture wasaltogether too simple and that we have to differentiate carefully withinthecategory of non-imperial cities.This essay is concerned with the HanseaticCities mainly in the northwest region of the Empire, which were mostly ofmedium size, with economic, social, and intellectual connections thatextended beyond the area of the respective territorial state. I shall arguethatthey may not be consideredordinary territorial cities but that there was aspecial type of Hanseatic City Reformation. Certainly we have todistinguish this from the imperial type of city reformation.Nevertheless, itwas an urban type of reformationcloser to the movement in the ImperialCities of the South and Southwest than to the princely reformation(Fürsten reformation)in the territories which included the territorialcities inthe strictest meaning of theword. Two simple considerations may show usin advance that the undifferentiated picture of an intellectually poorand exteriorly stimulated "Landstadt" or Provincial Town Reformationdoes notreflect the cultural andpolitical reality in the towns of Northwest Germany:

 1. With regard to intellectuallife we have only to refer to the devotionmoderna and the lively humanistictraditions spreading from the neighboring Netherlands. This is the moreimportant since Bernd Moeller explainsthe communal and republican features of upper-German Imperial CityReformation as a reflection of the humanist attitudes of Bucer andZwingli.And as it is correct thatNorthwest German towns did not produce any"great and independent protestant theologian,  we have to add that not afew of the Westphalian and Lower Saxon towns produced Lutheranreformers of some intellectual and regional importance-most of them withhumanist background. Impressive proofs of intellectual liveliness andcorresponding reforming, though not necessarily Lutheran, dynamics are thehumanist Gymnasia at Dortmund, Soest and Dusseldorf, founded in the1540s.

2.The second preliminary remark is concerned with thepolitical framework: the picture of a close connection between the Reformationand the will of the territorial rulers is not adequate, simply because thepower of these princes was quite limited during the first half of the sixteenthcentury. In the Northwest of Germany territorial state-building was actuallyjust beginning. And it was primarily the towns-most of them members of the HanseaticLeague, with many trans-territorial connections and considerable financial andeconomic strength-that stood in opposition to the rulers' state-buildingpolicy. In small or medium territories the Hanseatic towns still had apredominant and very independent position, and their burghers guarded theirtraditional autonomy suspiciously. In my opinion this intellectual andpolitical constellation produced a special type of Reformation development. Itmay be called the Hanseatic CityReformation.

Indeed, I need to stress that I am not using the term"Hanseatic City Reformation" simply for cities which belonged to themedieval Hanseatic League. "Hanseatic City" instead designates thoseprovincial towns which were set off from most territorial towns by theirtradition of municipal freedom and/or their economic significance, and whichfunctioned as partners in dealing with their respective princes. Thisdefinition of the term can also be related to the legal discussion of the time,in which Hanseatic Cities, represented by Syndici, trained in Roman law,demanded for themselves a quasi-autonomy within the territorial states. Towardthe end of the sixteenth century, in several significant legal arguments, thelawyers of the Hanseatic Cities advanced the theory that the Hanseatic citiespossessed a special legal status of civitatesmixtae, that is to say, of a political status between imperial cities andordinary territorial towns, which were fully integrated into the territorial state.

That which distinguishes the"Hanseatic City Reformation," and thus justifies it as a unique typeof city reformation in contradistinction to the Imperial City Reformation, isnot to be found in its municipal structures and affairs. As must still bedemonstrated in specific instances, this internal side of the Hanseatic CityReformation corresponded in large part to the Imperial City Reformation, asProfessor Moeller has described it.

The differences between these two types of cityreformation lie much more in the realm of external political relationships.They arose out of the Hanseatic Cities' place as provincial towns in thecultural, political, and social system of their respective territories. Insubstance that meant that the problem of reformation in the Hanseatic Citieswas closely bound to the rise of the early modern territorial state. To besure, the imperial cities were also affected by this development, and thus,too, the reformation of the imperial city. Butthe consequences and effect of the formation of the territorial statewere quite different for each type ofcity. The same thing was true of the possibilities and the dangers for the burghers of the Hanseatic Cities,or the imperial cities, which resultedfrom this process of the formation of the territorial state. Since the processof the reformation and in its settlement were important elements within the struggles for early modern "state’ building,it directly affected the politicaland constitutional system of the cities and the legal and social positions of their burghers. The "Hanseatic orprovincial City Reformation" was thus even more clearly than the"Imperial City Reformation" set into a political and social frameworkwhich was all-embracing. We now wish to consider how thisassociation of religious impulses on the one hand and the political and social initiatives on the other is to beunderstood.

 

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I shouldlike to describe the Hanseatic City Reformation in three steps: The events-thatis to say the different waves of reformation movement with special regard tothe involvement of the burghers (Part I); the Hanseatic City Reformation ascommunal burgher movement-the domestic context (Part II); the Hanseatic CityReformation and early modern territorial state building-the external context(Part III).

 

I. Theevents-the waves of the Reformation movement and the involvment of theburghers. As Franz Lau has shown, the main wave of reformation movement tookplace in the Hanseatic Cities during the early 1530s. It was a burgherreformation supported by craftsmen. "A Magistrate's reformation(Ratsreformation) did not exist, let alone a reformation introduced by theterritorial ruler as lord of the city." In some towns this alliance ofreformation and burgher movement was initiated or at least prepared in the 1520s.

In theearly 1520s Lutheran ideas were propagated by intellectuals and in some casessmall groups of burghers who met to read and discuss the publications ofLuther. Those intellectuals were the teachers at the parish or town schools,special groups within the towns' clergy, and the secretaries or the syndici ofthe town councils, often humanists. In 1525 strong burgher movements arose inconnection with the Peasants War at Dortmund, Minden and especially in Miinsterand Osnabrick, demanding, besides political and economic reforms, changeswithin the church, though Lutheran ideas remained in the background.

This wasdifferent in 1527/28, when in many of the Westphalian and Lower Saxon towns theburghers clearly demanded the Lutheran Reformation, making the way for thebreakthrough of the early 1530s. The wave of reform in 1531 and 1532 was by farthe most important one within the Hanseatic City Reformation. Nevertheless, thealliance between the burgher community and Lutheranism remained of importancebeyond this date, even in those cases where the Reformation had been victoriousand where the magistrates and the territorial princes eventually took theLutheran side. After the defeat of the Schmalkaldic League, when princes andtown magistrates conformed to the Interim due to political and legalconsiderations, this alliance became the guarantor of Protestantism all overnorth and northwest Germany. In some cases the burghers did not hesitate toexpress their will by the new uprisings.

We caneven trace the alliance up to the beginning of the seventeenth century, at theheight of Lutheran orthodoxy, which we are used to seeing in opposition to the"gemeindekirchlichen" beginning of the Reformation and in coalitionwith authoritarian forces in state and society. At the end of the sixteenth andin the beginning of the seventeenth centuries Lutheran burgher movements foughtagainst town magistrates and territorial rulers in two different ways: firstlywith regard to the Second Reformation, that is to say against the Calvinismdecreed by the territorial authorities (for example: Lemgo in Lippe; Marburg inHesse-Kassel; Berlin in Brandenburg; the imperial city of Dortmund with similartendencies in the 1570s); secondly within the Lutheran framework itselfLutheran burghers fought against the autocratic tendencies of the princes andtheir new bureaucratic administration which tried to incorporate the hithertoindependent Lutheran town churches into the semi-bureaucratic hierarchy of theterritorial church (Landeskirche), dominated by the territorial ruler (forexample: the Lower Saxon towns of Gbttingen, Nordheim, Hannover, and Hameln,which stood in opposition to the Welfian territorial church policy in the lasttwo decades of the sixteenth century).' In both contexts the burghers regardedthe existence and independence of the Lutheran town churches as importantelements and sacred symbols of the towns' autonomy within territories that wereon their way to becoming absolutistic territorial states.

 

II. Theburghers' case for Reformation and its political, social, and economicimplications. Can one-as Professor Dickens does-make a fundamental distinctionbetween religious elements on the one hand and political or economic elementson the other hand within the burghers' opposition to clericalism and to theautocracy of magistrates and princes? I do not think that this is adequatewithin the social and legal framework of late medieval and sixteenth centuryurban life. The ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical tensions in the townsformed a syndrome, and so did the ecclesiastical, political, social, and eventhe economic demands of the burghers. Consequently, we should look for theircommon roots. In doing this we may overcome the isolated views of the Reformationas either a theological or a social phenomenon. It was both. In my opinion thecommon roots of the Reformation-burgher movements can be found in theconstitution and the organization of urban society, in the underlying legalprinciples, and in the special mentality of burghers in early modern Europe.

Tooutline my interpretation in advance: The kernel of the problem lies inoligarchic and authoritarian (obrigkeitliche) tendencies within the townmagistrates and their elites, mostly in close alliance with the higher ranks ofthe clergy.These tendencies were contrary to the communal principles (Gemeinde-or Genossenschaftsprinzip) that gave the ultimate legitimacy of the towngovernment to the burghers' community.

I havethe impression that in the northwest region of the Empire-perhaps in contrastto the development in the imperial cities of the south-these communalprinciples became even more important during the sixteenth century, probably inconsequence of the permanent threat by the princes and their anti-communal,authoritarian territorial states. And it was these communal principles thatformed the intellectual and theoretical basis both of the religious andecclesiastical as well as the political and socio- economic demands of thecitizens.

To provethis I have to start with some information on the constitution of the Hanseatictowns. In contrast to the guild constitutions (Zunftverfassungen) of SouthGermany and the Rhineland the guild-burghers of the Westphalian and Lower Saxontowns could not influence the personal com- position of the town councildirectly. The elections for the town council were actually cooptations. Theguilds and the burgher community (Gemeinheit) nevertheless participated in thetown government, probably more effectively than the South German guildconstitutions allowed. The burgher participation of the Hanseatic Cities tookform in special institutions which supplemented the ordinary magistrates,composed of representatives of distinct craft guilds or of the local unitswithin the towns-"Bauernschaften," "Laischaften,""Kirchspiele," as they were called. The most famous example is the"Gesamtgilde" of Munster, an instrument of the guild masters of themost important handicrafts which represented the interests of the wholecommunity and which played an important role during Munster's developmenttowards the Anabaptist kingdom of Zion. In most other Hanseatic CityReformations it was also those instruments of guild and burgher participationwhich supported the demands for reformation and which organized the uprisingsagainst the conservative magistrates.

It iswrong to understand the communal principles and communal institutions in earlymodern towns as being democratic in the present sense of the word. But I wantto emphasize that to interpret them as instruments of class rule, designed tosmooth over social contrasts, is misleading, too. Burgher movements based oncommunal principles initiated a distinct type of societal conflict in the townsof the Reformation period. And it is not possible to understand adequately thestructure and the special dynamic of social change within early modern urbansociety without keeping this in mind. As reformation uprisings show, thosecommunal principles allowed the burghers to organize and legitimize successfulopposition against the councils and their oligarchies. Admittedly, it was notthe lower strata who profited from this opposition, but the middle strata ofthe guild burghers, led by well-to-do members of rising new families.Nevertheless, at least in the ecclesiastical and religious context, the ideasthat triumphed through this communal opposition were supported by the greatmajority of the town inhabitants, including the poor.