In 1374, the town council of Brunswick rose up against the common council of the Hanseatic city. The battles were short and bloody. Ten members of the council were publicly executed, the rest of the governing body were able to escape to the Hanseatic day trip, which had been hastily moved from Stralsund to Lübeck. Here, the fugitives gave a harrowing account of the violence they had experienced. They pleaded with the Hanseatic cities that the great violence be controlled and that they would not remain miserably displaced and dishonoured through no fault of their own . [1 ]

The events that went down in history as the Great Shift were deeply engraved in the collective memory of the Hanseatic region. The Lübisch Detmar Chronicle, for example, describes how in 1374 all hell broke loose in the city of Brunswick.[2] For the first time, the Hanseatic League decided to intervene on a larger scale in an inner-city dispute. In 1375, Brunswick was "verhanst" - i.e. excluded from the League of Merchants and Cities. It was not until 1380 that Brunswick was readmitted to the circle of Hanseatic cities.

However, nobody could forget what had happened: the Hanseatic League enshrined "Verhansung" as a punishment for rebellious communities that opposed its council in the so-called Statutes of Sedition of 1418. The Saxon cities, which had joined together to form a special regional alliance, went even further to support each other in an emergency. They agreed to provide active assistance. Until the middle of the 15th century, the Saxon cities also endeavoured to implement their more far-reaching rules for the entire Hanseatic League. In 1447, they were finally successful, at least temporarily.

The workshop

The Great Shift of Brunswick is one of the best-researched inner-city disputes of the late Middle Ages. For this very reason, it lends itself to exemplary work. However, the participants in the workshop will not be travelling down familiar paths. To this day, it has not been satisfactorily clarified why the Hanseatic League decided to intervene in the events.

The workshop has three aims. The participants should

1. work out which reasons led to the outbreak of the stratum and for what reasons it continued and how

2. determine why the Hanseatic League intervened

3. work out how the Hanseatic League's attitude changed as a result of new events - the "Verhansung", for example, was already cancelled in 1380, although the dispute was not formally settled until 1386. So what convinced the League of Merchants and Cities to no longer want to reject Brunswick?