Economic history of the Middle Ages

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An important part of the academic and scientific economic history deals with economic forms in the (European) Middle Ages . The focus is on the time after the end of antiquity up to the late Middle Ages and far beyond that into the early modern period . While in earlier decades this was certainly a focus of economic history as well as general history studies, the topic is dealt with by significantly fewer chairs and research institutions today. At German universities, economic history is partly integrated into general and interdisciplinary research on the Middle Ages (Medieval Studies). Chairs and professorships with the designation "Economic history of the Middle Ages" exist at German universities and colleges only in Leipzig (the chair for social and economic history by Markus A. Denzel ), in Greifswald (for medieval history / Hanseatic history by Horst Wernicke ) and in Kiel (for economic and social history by Gerhard Fouquet ). It was deleted from the Free University of Berlin , others were graded, like the one in Bamberg , or they were set to the 19th and 20th centuries, like in Cologne , Bonn or Nuremberg .

Most were based in the faculties or departments of economics and social sciences. Only Wolfgang von Stromer († 1999, FU Berlin, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages), in Bamberg for economic, social and technological history, in Nuremberg-Erlangen for economic and social history and Gerhard Fouquet hold or were professors for economics - and social history. Successful candidacies with a corresponding research focus, such as Klaus van Eickels in Bamberg, are also rare .

Working groups

The situation is similar with the working groups. The range of topics covered by the Working Group on Economic and Social History in Schleswig-Holstein, for example, had grown far beyond economic history. Medieval themes are only occasionally touched upon. The same applied to the working group for agricultural history , which merged with the Society for Agricultural History , or the working group for economic and social history of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen . Working groups play an important role in the history of the city: above all, the Southwest German working group for urban history research , the Austrian working group for urban history research , the working group of Lower Rhine municipal archivists and institutes such as the Institute for Comparative Urban History in Münster , which, however, only turned to economic history topics relatively late .

Interdisciplinary collaboration

In the area of ​​trade and handicrafts in the early Middle Ages, intensive collaboration with archeology and linguistics developed. Mention should be made of the Commission for the Classical Studies of Central and Northern Europe of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, since 1975. The late antique-early medieval economic history of Central Europe can be considered to be well processed.

Agriculture in the Middle Ages

Traditionally important was the agricultural history of the Middle Ages, i.e. the research into the most important branch of the economy in medieval society - agriculture. In the German post-war period, it was mainly shaped by the people Wilhelm Abel , Friedrich Lütge and Günther Franz . Abel's main focus was German agriculture, Lütge published on the history of the agricultural constitution and Franz worked on the history of the peasants and the peasant class. You worked as editor and author of the multi-volume German agricultural history . Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning and others have been providing important impulses since the 1970s . a. as editor of the important journal Vierteljahrschrift for social and economic history and author of important overview articles and books on agricultural history in the pre-industrial era. Further research topics included a. Work on the village and the village community, the upswing of which has been observed in rural areas since the High Middle Ages. In the last few decades, new concepts from the field of social and cultural anthropological research have been added, the focus of which is on research into “peasant society” (the “peasant society” model).

City economy: trade and craft

Initially, the focus of urban economics research was more on constitutional and legal history , then social, cultural and everyday history .

Edith Ennens standard works The European City of the Middle Ages and German City Economy from the Early Middle Ages to 1350 was joined by Eberhard Isenmann's The German City in the Late Middle Ages 1250–1500 . The cities of Cologne and Nuremberg are best dealt with , where the first summary is Hektor Ammann's contributions to the economic history of Nuremberg from 1967, but above all the economic position of the imperial city of Nuremberg in the late Middle Ages . Fundamental work was done by Götz Freiherr von Pölnitz and Wolfgang von Stromer ( Oberdeutsche Hochfinanz 1350-1450 ), who was able to show how early and comprehensively merchants and bankers used lending - mostly to finance military and territorial-political enterprises - to improve politics and society in their own right influencing economic interest.

The economic history of Augsburg is similarly well worked out , with the Fugger and Welsers around 1500 predominantly in trade, not in trade or innovation. Wolfgang Zorn provided a city history with Augsburg. History of a German city . Philippe Dollinger should be mentioned again for Strasbourg and Michael Matheus for Trier .

The Ammann concept of researching "economic units" and Walter Christaller's centrality approach have proven to be productive for decades .

Many local studies face few overarching questions, such as Rolf Sprandel's The Iron Industry in the Middle Ages (1968), von Stromer's The Foundation of the Cotton Industry in Central Europe (1978), Ammann's The Beginnings of the Linen Industry in the Lake Constance Area (1953) and Germany and the cloth industry of Northwestern Europe in the Middle Ages . In contrast, the publishing industry has been well researched for a long time and the work ranges from Fridolin Furger : On the publishing system as an organizational form of early capitalism in the textile industry (1927) to Rudolf Holbach's early forms of publishing and large-scale operations in commercial production (13th-16th centuries) (1996) . Journeyman, apprentices and wage workers mainly worked on Wilfried Reininghaus and Knut Schulz , the building trade Ulf Dirlmeier , followed by Gerhard Fouquet , technical innovations mostly from Stromer (mill technology, paper production, book printing).

Markets, fairs, long-distance trade

While research into the urban market played a role from the beginning, the periodic markets were long considered the domain of Hektor Ammann . The trade fair anniversaries, such as that of Frankfurt (1990/91) and Leipzig , gave rise to overview works. There were also conferences such as the Commission Internationale pour l'Histoire des Villes from 1990–1995 . The Institute for Comparative Urban History also selected European trade fairs and market systems in the Middle Ages and Modern Times as its conference topic in 1991 , followed in 2000 by the Italian Istituto di storia economica "Francesco Datini" in Prato (cf. Francesco Datini ) and the Hanseatic History Association in 2001.

“ The continuity gap between the early fair in St. Denis and the first safe fairs of the 10th century was closed by interpreting the early medieval merchant branches on the North Sea and Baltic Sea as fairgrounds that were only filled with traders on fixed dates” (Irsigler). In addition, the systemic character of regional exhibition centers in Flanders , south-east England, on the Lower Rhine, in the Middle Rhine region and in southern Italy was modeled on the champagne fairs , a system that led to a trade fair typology and hierarchy, even if in the Hanseatic region only the Scandinavian fair existed, The large exhibition centers were the most important money and credit markets from the start, and fairs as art markets were also researched.

Biographical Research

Gerhard Unmaze, right, at the Cologne council tower, Rainer Walk

Biographies form an important basis for transmission and presentation. Outstanding are the works and collections on Hildebrand Veckinchusen from Lübeck, the Regensburger Runtingern , the Fuggern and Welsern, the Dortmund Tidemann Lemberg , the Lübeck Hinrich Castorp or the Loitz active in Stettin , Danzig and Lüneburg . Surprisingly early, merchants gained great influence, such as the wealthy Cologne merchant Gerhard Unmaze from the 12th century . Research on the professional awareness of distance traders was strongly influenced by Italy. The type of the great Upper German merchant-entrepreneur clearly emerged, who set himself apart from the crowd of Hanseatic merchants, who in turn were part of a solid network of family companies. They also preferred other forms of loan security than the Upper Germans.

Nevertheless, an overall presentation of the medieval merchants and their performance is still pending.

Money and currencies

There are almost only regional and local studies on this topic. Exceptions are Norbert Kamp : Moneta regis. Contributions to the history of the royal mints and the royal minting policy in the Staufer period , Gert Hatz : Trade and traffic between the German Empire and Sweden in the late Viking Age. The German coins of the 10th and 11th centuries in Sweden , and Bernd Kluge : German coin history from the late Carolingian era to the end of the Salians (approx. 900 to 1125) .

Regional studies come from Niklot Klüßendorf (Lower Rhine, Aachen), ( Rainer Metz ) (Rhineland), Gerald Stefke (Hamburg), Reiner Cunz (Northwest Germany), Klaus Petry (Upper Lorraine), Karl Weisenstein (Trier), Peter Ilisch (Lower Lorraine). The Rhineland is best explored for the late Middle Ages. There are also works on Westphalia by Peter Berghaus and Peter Ilisch, Lower Saxony, Franconia ( Hansheiner Eichhorn ), the narrower Hanseatic area ( Michael North , who also wrote a historical lexicon of money and a brief history of money).

There are works on the Rappenmünzbund (southwest), the Rhenish and the Wendish Münzverein on the coin associations .

Wolfgang von Stromer's assumptions about the modalities of the money transfer, the change and the function of the exchange offices and the early existence of Upper German merchant-bankers were put into perspective by Arnold Esch .

The continuation of the history of Wilhelm Abel's prices and wages with their immense data collections was secured by moving from Göttingen to Leipzig.

Mining and metallurgy, energy

Often have work, like that of Hermann Kellenbenz : iron, copper and precious metals their focus rather in the period after 1500. Basically are here Ekkehard Westermann : copper, lead and silver mining, Saigerhütten , but also works at the University of Bremen arose such as those of Dieter Hägermann and Karl-Heinz Ludwig (salt works in Lorraine, Lüneburg, Trient mining law, precious metal mining in the Alps, edition of the mining law of Massa Marittima). Above all, Adolf Laube and Uwe Schirmer worked on the Ore Mountains, and Wolfgang von Stromer on the Upper Palatinate iron district.

Dietrich Lohrmann (Aachen) and his students dealt with the question of energy supply and generation, especially with equipping large rooms with water and windmills or the Cologne Rhine mills. Lohrmann and von Stromer stated that there was an “energy crisis in the Middle Ages”, but this was put into perspective by others as a problem in the commercial regions. J. Wiesenmann ( coal mining in the territories around Aachen 1334–1794 , 1995) and H. Kranz (zu Liège, 2000, 2002) should be mentioned on the hard coal mining, and Karl Heinrich Kaufhold and Christoph Bartels on the Harz . A monograph on the history of mining is still pending.

Viticulture and trade

The basic work of Günther Franz (ed.): German agricultural history in 6 volumes by 12 authors hardly mentions viticulture. The general literature is out of date.

The impetus came from Hektor Ammann, but also from Raymond van Uytven , who compared the Cologne wine market with that of Bordeaux . The importance for urban households, the concentration of Roman viticulture on the Moselle , the high level of continuity in the Carolingian period, e.g. B. in the work organization (centena) and the locations, is only revealed in the most recent research. The Moselle region, the Middle Rhine and the Palatinate, but also Thuringia, England ( Kurt-Ulrich Jäschke ) are best explored. Postel, Sander worked the wine cellars in northern Germany. Here, too, there is still no comprehensive representation.

Desiderata

Numerous serial sources have not yet been edited, such as the Rheinzölle in Cologne, numerous account books. There are no economic histories of the major regions, even if some manuals offer a certain introduction, such as B. to Franconia and Lower Saxony.

The handbooks on economic and social history, such as that of Aubin and Zorn, are out of date.

Issues such as small loans have hardly been addressed so far, although it has now become apparent that lending money or in kind is to be interpreted as an omnipresent component of social interactions across all social classes, but which primarily served to secure stable relationships (“Debt as Putty of society ”). Until around 1800, the focus was on trust and a good reputation, secured by informal institutions and interpersonal relationships. The complementary element of control is only reinforced afterwards. Funds from the church factory were also made available to the small loan market. The lack of credit protection systems, in turn, encouraged the insistence of cash payments in rural long-distance trade.

Hanseatic research

Research into the Hanseatic League plays a special role, with the chairs in Greifswald , then Jürgen Sarnowsky in Hamburg, Rolf Hammel-Kiesow (research center for the history of the Hanseatic League and the Baltic Sea region, archive of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck ), the professorship of Rudolf Holbach at the University of Oldenburg and Gerhard Fouquet from Kiel can apply. The most important journals for Hanseatic research are the Hansische Geschichtsblätter (since 1871), sources and descriptions of Hanseatic history. NF, the Hanseatic Studies from the GDR and the Hansische Umschau . Hanseatic research was driven forward by early source editions. The series “ Hansische Geschichtsquellen” , published since 1875, and from 1908 the treatises on trade and maritime history, became important

Above all quantitative sources, such as the Hamburg Pound Customs Books of 1369, 1389/1400 and 1418, the Lübeck Pound Customs Books from 1492–1496, the Hanseatic Pound Customs Lists from 1368, the Hamburg Debt Register from 1288, but also the Reval Treasury Books from 1432–1507, the Sund customs bills , sources on commercial bookkeeping, accounting for trading companies and communication structures made the research much easier. The outstanding figures here are Dietrich Schäfer , Fritz Rörig , Wilhelm Koppe , Ahasver von Brandt , and Heinrich Sproemberg .

In the GDR there was the Hansische Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Historikergesellschaft der DDR , based in Greifswald , which published the treatises on trade and social history (from 1958), Hansische Studien (from 1961), and then New Hanseatic Studies (1970-1989). Since 2001 they have appeared again independently as Hansische Studien .

The standard work is still Philippe Dollinger's “Die Hanse”, which the Strasbourg man published in French in 1964. Since then there have been shorter representations, but also controversial ones, such as that by Heinz Stoob .

In-depth studies, such as that of Stuart Jenks on England, the Hanseatic League and Prussia. Trade and diplomacy 1377–1474 , Hansische Handelsstraßen von Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka , Detlev Ellmer's early medieval merchant shipping in Central and Northern Europe , led to a considerable revaluation of the services of the Hanseatic industry, but also to earlier evidence for the publishing system; Overall, they refuted the thesis that the Hanseatic League was lagging behind in terms of innovation, as well as that of its hostility to credit (Stuart Jenks and Michael North ).

literature

  • Arie van Steensel: Medieval Studies in the Netherlands (Institutes, Associations, Resources) , in: Reti Medievali Rivista 16,2 (2015) 309-316 ( online , PDF).

Remarks

  1. ^ Simplifying according to: Franz Irsigler : ( Economic history of the Middle Ages ( Memento of June 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) , PDF) from 2007, archive.org.
  2. ^ University of Cologne
  3. ↑ Van Eickel's publications on economic history: The Deutschordensballei Koblenz and its economic development in the late Middle Ages , Marburg 1995; Sources on the legal and economic history of the Archdiaconate and Xanten Monastery . Second volume, ed. v. Friedrich Wilhelm Oediger, revised and supplemented by Christine van Eickels and Klaus van Eickels (The Collegiate Church of St. Viktor zu Xanten, Vol. VIII.2), Kevelaer 1994; The persons liable for wax interest of the St. Viktor-Stift zu Xanten , ed. by Friedrich-Wilhelm Oediger and Klaus van Eickels, Kevelaer 1991.
  4. ^ Working group in portrait ( memento from November 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), Working group for economic and social history of Schleswig-Holstein, archive.org, November 29, 2010.
  5. ↑ European trade fairs and market systems in the Middle Ages and modern times . 1996; City and handicraft in the Middle Ages and early modern times . 2000 (focus far after 1500, mining towns).
  6. ↑ Cf. Werner Rösener : Agriculture in the Middle Ages , in: Günther Schulz et al. (Ed.): Social and economic history. Areas of work - problems - perspectives , Stuttgart 2005, pp. 19–39.
  7. ↑ Cf. Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning : Agriculture in the Modern Times , in: Günther Schulz et al. (Ed.): Social and economic history. Areas of work - problems - perspectives , Stuttgart 2005, pp. 41–67.
  8. ^ In the handbook of European economic and social history .
  9. ↑ Especially pp. 341–402.
  10. ^ Source editions by Bruno Kuske from 1908: The trade relations between Cologne and Italy in the late Middle Ages. In: West German Journal for History and Art 27, 1908, pp. 393–441; comprehensive trade history: Gunther Hirschfelder : The Cologne trade relations in the late Middle Ages , Cologne 1994; ders .: Cologne long-distance trade in the late Middle Ages , Cologne 1996; likewise the role of women ( Margret Wensky : The position of women in the Cologne city economy in the late Middle Ages , Böhlau, Cologne 1980).
  11. ↑ Trier at the end of the Middle Ages. Studies on the social, economic and constitutional history of the city of Trier from the 14th to the 16th century . 1984.
  12. ↑ For example Rolf Kießling : The city and its country. Environment politics, citizen ownership and economic structure in East Swabia from the 14th to the 16th century . 1989.
  13. ↑ In: Hansische Geschichtsblätter 72, 1954, pp. 1–63.
  14. ^ Michael Rothmann : The Frankfurt Masses of the Middle Ages , 1998, and Leipzig (1997).
  15. ↑ See: Runtingerhaus .
  16. ↑ Diss. Göttingen 1957; ders .: Coinage and coinage policy of the Hohenstaufen in Germany. In: Hamburg Contributions to Numismatics NF 17, 1963, pp. 517-544.
  17. ↑ Lund 1974; also Gerhard Hatz: The trade in the late Viking Age between Northern Europe (especially Sweden) and the German Empire according to numismatic sources. In: Düwel et al. (Ed.): The trade in the Carolingian and Viking ages . Göttingen 1987, pp. 86-112.
  18. ^ Sigmaringen 1991.
  19. ↑ In summary: MA Denzel: La Practica della Cambiatura. European payments from the 14th to the 17th centuries . Stuttgart 1994.
  20. ↑ F. v. Bassermann-Jordan: History of Viticulture , 2 vols. Frankfurt a. M. 1923; G. Schreiber: German wine history. Wine in popular life, cult and economy . Cologne 1980 (research status up to approx. 1960, bibliography supplemented by the editor up to 1979).
  21. ↑ Eckart Schremmer : The development of the industrial economy and trade up to the beginning of mercantilism. In: M. Spindler (Ed.): Handbook of Bavarian History , Vol. III, pp. 478–503.
  22. ↑ Carl-Hans Hauptmeyer : Lower Saxony Economic and Social History in the High and Late Middle Ages (1000-1500). In: E. Schubert (Hrsg.): Geschichte Niedersachsens , Vol. II, 1: Politics, Constitution, Economy from the 9th to the end of the 15th Century , Hanover 1997, pp. 1041–1279.
  23. ^ Hermann Aubin , Wolfgang Zorn (ed.): Handbook of German Economic and Social History , Vol. 1: From the early days to the end of the 18th century . Stuttgart 1971 - only partially usable as a replacement: Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning : Handbuch der Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte Deutschlands , Vol. 1: German Economic and Social History in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Era , Paderborn et al. 1991.
  24. ↑ Knut Andermann , Gerhard Fouquet (Ed.): Interest and validity. Structures of rural credit systems in the late Middle Ages and early modern times , bibliotheca academica Verlag, Epfendorf 2016. ISBN 978-3-928471-99-2 .
  25. ↑ Document book of the city of Lübeck , 11 vol., Lübeck 1843–1905, Hanserezesse, etc. (see Wikisource ).
  26. ↑ From 1928 continued as sources and representations on Hanseatic history.
  27. ↑ 10 vols., New series to 1937 (5 vols.).
  28. ↑ 1966 in German, 5 editions until 1998.
  29. ↑ The Hanseatic League. Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1995.
  30. ^ Habilitation thesis, 3 vol., 1992.