Did the activity of the ‘Vitalian Brethren’ prevent trade in the Baltic area?

Summary

ABSTRACT. Old historiography uses the name ‘Vitalien Brethren’ for a gang of pirates led in the 1390s by Klaus Störtebeker. The author demonstrates that they were in fact professional fighters contracted by Mecklembourg against the Danes and that the interruption of commercial activities was due to political reasons. Hansa officials used this term ‘Vitalien Brethren’ to describe latent problems in commercial connectivity.

RÉSUMÉ. L'historiographie ancienne nomme ‘Vitalien Brethren’ une bande de pirates, conduite dans les années 1390 par Klaus Störtebeker. L'auteur montre qu'en fait il s'agit de combattants professionnels au service du Mecklembourg contre les Danois, et que l'interruption des activités commerciales était due à des raisons politiques. Sous le terme de ‘Vitalien Brethren’, les responsables nordiques désignent tout trouble latent de la connectivité commerciale.

Every German knows the ‘Vitalienbrüder’, a legendary company of pirates fighting under the leadership of Klaus Störtebeker and Gödeke Michels against the mighty ‘Hansa’. The great seafaring nations of the West may have had their famous pirates and privateers, Germany has Klaus Störtebeker – notwithstanding the undeniable fact that the North Sea and the Baltic are somewhat smaller than the oceans the others may have crossed. The ‘vitalian brethren’ are in a way so well known, that we tend to take their existence for granted. But what do sources mean, when they mention the ‘vitalienbrodere’? Were there people who denoted themselves as such, or did others call them so? Who was called a ‘vitalienbroder’ and by whom? Who was not? We have to ask these questions before we can deal with the issue of whether these dubious people may have been a menace for maritime trade.

In what follows I will argue that the term ‘vitalienbrodere’ did not designate an organized group of privateers or pirates respectively, but an abstract threat to economic distribution. Because commercial and political customary law permitted the withdrawal of goods in many well-defined cases, violence was not an alien assault from outside, but an integral part of the game. Businessmen conducted these legitimate divestments themselves, or they commissioned professionals to do so.