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Nigra crux mala crux: a comparative perspective on urban conflict in Gdansk in 1411 and 1416

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2014

CORDELIA HESS
CORDELIA HESS*
Affiliation:
The Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Department of History, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden
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Abstract

Between 1411 and 1416, Gdansk was the scene for a complex conflict between town population, council and landlord, eventually resulting in violent riots. The peculiar character of these riots becomes apparent when the Gdansk chronicles are compared to the historical accounts from other, better-known conflicts, particularly sources depicting the Lübeck Knochenhauer rebellion, the Hamburg brewer's rebellion of 1481 and the 1449–53 Gentse opstand. A key difference is the extent to which chroniclers understood and portrayed the ritualized action that occurred in the urban uprisings. Comparing the contemporary chronicles of the Gdansk events with the town's urban historiography 100 years later also shows that this early conflict with the landlord later played a significant role in urban self-definition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 565 - 581
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 The Rechtsstadt of Gdansk took part in the diets of the Hanseatic League beginning in 1361. Occasionally, the Teutonic Order exercised control over the town's foreign policy, such as when they forced the town to remain neutral during the war between the Hanseatic League and Eric of Pomerania in the 1420s. See Cieślak, E. (ed.), Historia Gdańska: Opracowanie zbiorowe, vol. I: Do roku 1454 (Gdańsk, 1978)Google Scholar.

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14 Scholars dealing with the historiography of medieval Prussia have noted a shift that occurred around 1400; from the historiography of the Teutonic Order to Prussian historiography and from Order-centred to regional historiography. See Päsler, R.G., Deutschsprachige Sachliteratur im Preussenland bis 1500: Untersuchungen zu ihrer Überlieferung (Cologne, 2003), 273–4Google Scholar, with a discussion of the work of Boockmann.

15 Danziger Ordenschronik, SRP, vol. IV, 366–83. It is not the only chronicle from an urban perspective, but it is the only one that not only deals with the immediate history of the Thirteen Year War, but also addresses the earlier events of interest for this study. See Heckmann, M., ‘Krieg und historische Erinnerung im landesherrlichen und im städtischen Milieu des Hanseraums’, in Czaja, R. (ed.), Das Bild und die Wahrnehmung der Stadt und der städtischen Gesellschaft im Hanseraum im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Toruń, 2004), 115–62, at 145–6Google Scholar. Danziger Ordenschronik is said to have been a major source for the chronicle by the Dominican Simon Grunau, who tells the story of the 1411 and 1416 riots in a version closely resembling the one in the later chronicles from Gdansk, particularly the Wartzmann chronicle. Simon Grunau's Preussische Chronik; Bd. 2: Tractat 15/22, ed. M. Perlbach et al. (Leipzig, 1889), 10–13, at 42–4.

16 The SRP, vol. IV, edition includes only parts of the text, which has survived in six manuscripts. See Arnold, U., Studien zur preußischen Historiographie des 16. Jahrhunderts (Bonn, 1967)Google Scholar; further references can also be found in Heckmann, ‘Krieg’, 145.

17 Heinrich von Reden (also: Rheden), Preußische Chronik, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Berlin (Stabi), MS boruss., fol. 176; see Arnold, Studien, 87–150, about the relationship between the Reden chronicle and a now lost version from the library of Oberlandesgericht Celle.

18 Stabi, MS boruss., fol. 255, no author or date are given in the catalogue.

19 Stabi, MS boruss., fol. 175. The older version of the Wartzmann chronicle from around 1543 is included in MS boruss., fol. 691, in a seventeenth-century edition. MS boruss., fol. 175, also includes a copy of the Eberhart Ferber-Buch.

20 See a typologization of sixteenth-century urban historiography in Mentzel-Reuters, A., ‘Danziger Historiographie des 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Beckmann, S. and Garber, K. (eds.), Kulturgeschichte Preußens königlich polnischen Anteils in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 2005), 99–128Google Scholar; criticism of the SRP edition and of the assignment of the chronicles to Wartzmann and Ferber, ibid., 107–9.

21 All of the chronicles mentioned are different versions of a complex of interconnected texts; both the entire chronicles and their single elements reappear in other manuscripts, mainly in the collections in the Staatsbibliothek Berlin and the Biblioteka Gdańska Polskiej Akademii Nauk (earlier: Stadtbibliothek Danzig). Their mutual relationship has not been the subject of research.

22 ‘Die Chronik des Johann von Posilge’, ed. M. Toeppen, SRP, vol. III, 326–7 (1410–11) and 361–2 (1416).

23 The Ältere Hochmeisterchronik has an extremely complicated tradition. 10 pre-1500 manuscripts have survived, in six different classes. Only one manuscript from Gdansk includes a description of the uprising. See the list of manuscripts in Päsler, Sachliteratur, 292–3.

24 Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin (GSTA), XX. HA, OBA 1522 [Apr. 1411?].

25 GSTA, XX. HA, OBA 239, 28 Aug. 1416.

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29 ‘Bericht über den Knochenhauer-Aufstand im Jahre 1384’, ChrondtSt 26, 353.

30 Schayes (ed.), Dagboek der Gentsche Collatie, 66.

31 The descriptions of the events include details about the victims being lured to the castle, the number of wounds inflicted when they were killed and the wine and food sent to the castle, by the families who believed the men to be imprisoned there. Danziger Ordenschronik, SRP, vol. IV, 377; Wartzmann-Chronik, fol. 71r; Eberhart Ferber-Buch, fol. 9r–9v.

32 Czaja, R., ‘Der Handel des Deutschen Ordens und der Städte’, in Nowak, (ed.), Ritterorden und Region – politische, soziale und wirtschaftliche Verbindungen im Mittelalter (Toruń, 1995), 111–23, at 115Google Scholar.

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34 Heinrich von Reden, Preußische Chronik, fol. 105v.

35 ‘Ihr sollet die müntze nemen, vnd soltet ihr euch auch zum ersten hindter den ohren krawen.’ Wartzmann-Chronik, fols. 70v–71r.

36 Krantz, Wandalia, liber 13, cap. 29, p. 468.

37 ‘Dosulves stund up ein grot vordreet in der stad to Dantzke in Prutzen tusschenn deme rade und der menheit. Dat orsakede sick van der munte.’ Rufuschronik, SRP, vol. III, 407.

38 SRP, vol. III, 361.

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43 ‘. . . eyn gros rumor und offlouff zcu Danczk zcwoschin der gemeyne und dem rate . . . und das commune liff off das rathus, und underwand sich, was do was, und das povel liff vor Gerkin hus van der Beke, und nomen dorus, was si fundin, und begingin grosin frebil’. SRP, vol. III, 326–7.

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