Seminar on Hanseatic subaltern in the late Middle Ages at the Latvian Academy of Culture
J. K. Broce, Merchants on the riverside in Riga, drawing, 18th century. Image from the collection of the University of Latvia Academic Library.
On 30 September and 1 October, the Latvian Academy of Culture will host a seminar Hanseatic subaltern: Methods and approaches in the research of social, economic and ethnic exclusion in the Hanseatic cities (c. 1350-c. 1550).
Most research on the history of the Hanseatic towns focuses on the elites. The non-elites, groups and individuals from the lower social strata, have rarely been the focus of historical research. One of the reasons for this is the scarcity of surviving sources that allow the study of ethnicity, social marginality, exclusion or other issues relating to the non-elites. Similarly, research has tended to focus on connections between and within cities, with exclusion and marginality less often discussed, the Hanse and the Hanseatic cities emphasised as unifying factors, and ruptures and divisions less often explored.
This workshop will focus on the ruptures and divisions in the Hanseatic societies and subaltern individuals and groups, namely those low-ranking in a social and political hierarchy in the northern German cities (Lübeck, Stralsund, Rostock etc.) and in the Baltic – Riga and Tallinn. These cities were multi-ethnic and multi-cultural environments that experienced economic and cultural changes since the second part of the 14th century when the non-Germans (Slavic Wends in northern German cities and Finno-Ugric and Baltic locals in Riga and Tallinn) were excluded from the merchant and craft guilds. We want to explore questions of exclusion and ethnicity (intersectionality of the exclusion) from a cultural-historical perspective: spaces, groups, their rituals, activities and interactions with the urban elites. We want to explore the role of gender within the exclusion and marginalisation. Likewise, we aim to look at other marginal groups (criminals, pirates, representatives of illicit professions etc.) and their different or similar roles within the urban fabric of the late medieval Hanseatic cities in a broad geographic space between northern Germany and the Baltic (Livonia). We are interested in how new approaches to cultural, social and postcolonial history can change the way we study such groups and individuals.
The seminar is organised by Gustavs Strenga and Maija Spuriņa, senior researchers at the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies, Latvian Academy of Culture, with financial support from the Baltic-German Higher Education Office.
Programme and more information about the project is available on the LAC website: https://static.lka.edu.lv/en/research/research-projects/international-research-projects/hanseatic-subaltern/
Programme:
30 September – 1 October 2024. Venue: Latvian Academy of Culture, Eduards Smiļģis Theater Museum, Eduarda Smiļģa iela 37, Riga
Day 1.
30 September
13.30-13.45 Welcome speeches
13.45-14.15 Maija Spuriņa (Latvian Academy of Culture) Social sciences and the research of marginalization
14.15-15.00 Philipp Höhn (University of Halle-Wittenberg) “The making of the Hanse working class? Perspectives on 'class', law and labor markets in Northern European maritime economics”
15.00-15.15 Coffee Break
15.15-16.00 Cordelia Heß (University of Greifswald/Aarhus University) “‘Undeutsche‘. Intersectional Perspectives on a Category of Exclusion”
16.00-16.45 Gustavs Strenga (Latvian Academy of Culture, Riga) “Hanseatic cultural history of the margins? The corporations of the lower classes in the Hanseatic cities and their relations with the urban elites (examples from Riga, Tallinn, Stralsund and Lübeck)”
16.45-17.00 Coffee Break
17.00-17.45 Matthew Stevens (University of Swansea) “Incidental details in The Chronicle of the Prussian Land as evidence of multiethnicity in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Prussian towns”
17.45-18.30 Discussion
Day 2.
1 October
9.00-9.45 Gregor Rohmann (University of Rostock) “Were 'pirates' subaltern? Maritime violence in late medieval Northern Europe between inclusion and exclusion”
9.45-10.30 Clara Skrippek (Free University of Berlin) “The exclusion of Slavs from guilds in north-east German towns. an example of medieval racism”
10.30-10.45 Coffee Break
10.45-11.30 Discussion on the creation of new collaborative networks and projects on the Hanseatic Subaltern
This project of the Baltic-German University Liaison Office is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic Germany.