Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/47

Rh LUBECK 33 shoals of herring, a constant source of early wealth, began to forsake the Baltic waters. Later on, by the discovery of a new continent, general commerce was diverted into new directions. Finally, with the Thirty Years War, mis fortunes and ruin came thick. The last Hanseatic diet met at Liibeck in 1630, shortly after Wallenstein s unsuccessful attack on Stralsund; and from that time merciless sovereign powers stopped free intercourse on all sides. Danes and Swedes battled for the possession of the Sound and its heavy dues. The often changing masters of Holstein and Lauenburg abstracted much of the valuable landed property of the city and of the chapter of Liibeck. Still, towards the end of the 18th century, there were signs of improvement. Though the Danes temporarily occupied the town in 1801, it preserved its freedom and gained some of the chapter lands when the imperial constitution of Germany was broken up by the Act of February 25, 1803. Trade and commerce prospered marvellously for a few years. But in November 1806, when General Bliicher, retiring from ths catastrophe of Jena, had to capitulate in the vicinity of Liibeck, the town was taken and sacked by the enemy. Napoleon annexed it to the empire in December 1810. But it rose against the French, March 19, 1813, was reoccupied by them till the 5th December, and was ultimately declared a free and Hanse town of the German Confederation by the Act of Vienna, June 9, 1815. The Hanseatic League, however, having never been officially dissolved, Liibeck still enjoyed its traditional connexion with Bremen and Hamburg. In 1853 they sold their common property, the London Steelyard. Till 1866 they enlisted by special contract their military contingents for the German Confederation. Down to the year 1879 they had their own court of appeal at Liibeck. The town, however, joined the Prussian Customs Union as well as the North German Union in 1866, profiting by the final retire ment from Holstein and Lauenburg of the Danes, whose interference had prevented as long as possible a direct railroad between Liibeck and Hamburg. Liibeck through many changes in the course of eight centuries has preserved its republican government. At the first rise of the town, justice was administered to the inhabitants by the vogt (reeve) of the count. Simultaneously with the incorporation by Henry the Lion, who presented the citizens with the privileges of mint, toll, and market of their own, there appears a magistracy of six persons, elected probably by the reeve from the schoffcn (scabini, probi homines). The members of the town council had to be freemen, born in lawful wedlock, in the enjoyment of free property, and of unstained repute. Vassals or servants of any lord and tradespeople were excluded. A third of the number had annually to retire for a year, so that two-thirds formed the sitting, the other third the reposing council. By the middle of the 13th cen tury there were two burgomasters (magistri burgensium, mayistri civium, proconsuks). Meanwhile the number of magistrates (con- sides) had largely increased, but was indefinite, ranging from twenty to fort} and upwards. The council appointed its own officers in the various branches of the administration, chancellor, chaplain, surgeon, stadcsscrivcre (recorders), notaries, secretaries, marshal, con stable, keeper of the ordnance, messengers, watchmen. In the face of so much self-government the vogt by and by vanished completely. He is by no means to be confounded with the rector, a neighbouring prince, whom the Liibeckers occasionally adopted as their honorary guardian. There were three classes of inhabitants full freemen, half freemen, guests or foreigners. People of Slav origin being considered unfree, all intermarriage with them tainted the blood. Hence nearly all surnames point to Saxon, especially &quot;Westphalian, and even Flemish descent. Since the end of the 13th century the city has been entered by the same gates and traversed by the same streets as at the present day. Stately churches of the Gothic order in glazed brick rose slowly, last not least St Mary s or Die Rnthslcirche close to the Rathhaus (town-hall) and the spacious market-place with its long rows of booths and the pillory. Within its precincts is the Horn (cathedral) dedicated to St Nicholas, the patron saint of navigators ; in Protestant times down to 1803 the secularized chapter was generally presided over by a prince of the ducal house of Gottorp. There were magnificent convents of the Domi nicans, the Franciscans, and the nuns of St Clara. The population, when the city and the Hansa were in full power about 1400, can scarcely have been under 80,000. But such prosperity was not obtained by foreign commerce alone, though this was the principal occupation of the upper classes : the Junker or Zirkel company, a sort of patriciate (since 1379) ; the merchant company, also patricians, but mostly &quot;rentiers&quot;; the &quot;nations&quot; of the Ber- gcnfahrcr, Schonenfahrcr, Xovgoroclfahrer, Rigafahrcr, Stockholm- fahrer. From the very beginning various tradespeople and handi craftsmen had settled in the town, all of them freemen, of German parentage, and with property and houses of their own. Though not eligible for the council, they shared to a certain extent in the self-government through the aldermen of each corporation (amt, oth eium, guild), of which some appear as early as the statutes of 1240, and many more arise and disappear in course of time under authority of the council and the guidance of certain police magistrates (wcttchcrren). A number still exist, and own their old picturesque gable houses. The rolls of nearly all have been kept most carefully. Naturally there arose much jealousy between the guilds and the aristocratic companies, which exclusively ruled the republic. After an attempt to upset the merchants had been suppressed in 13S4, the guilds succeeded under more favourable cir cumstances in 1408. The old patrician council left the city to appeal to the Hansa and to the imperial authorities, while a new council, elected chiefly from the guilds, with democratic tenden cies, took their place. In 1416, however, there was a complete restoration, owing to the interference of the confederated cities and of two kings of the Romans, Rupert and Sigismund. The aristo cratic government was expelled a second time when democracy and religious sectarianism got the upper hand under the dictatorship of Wullenwever, till the old order of things was once more re-i stab- lished in 1535. Nevertheless the mediaeval church had been finally supplanted by the Lutheran Reformation, and the tendency to increase the political privileges of the commonalty appeared again and again. In the constitution of 1669, under the pressure of a great public debt, the seven upper companies yielded to (8) the Gcwandsclmcidcr (merchant tailors), (9) the grocers, (10) the brewers, (11) the mariners, and (12) the combined four great guilds, viz., the smiths, bakers, tailors, and shoemakers, a specified share in the financial administration. Nevertheless they continued to choose the magistrates by co-optation among themselves. Three of the four burgomasters and two of the senators, however, henceforth had to be graduates in law. Their constitution, set aside only during the French ascendency, has subsequently been slowly reformed. From 1813 senatorial and civic deputies joined in the administration of an annual budget of income, expenditure, and public debt. But the reform committee of 1814, of which the object was to substitute for the rule of the old companies a wider participation of the citizens in their common affairs (most of the learned professions, many proprietors, and the suburban population being without any representation), had made very little progress, when under the pressure of the events of the year 1848 a representative assembly of one hundred and twenty members, elected by universal suffrage, obtained a place beside the senatorial government. By the consti tution of the 29th December 1851 the senate, for which all citizens above thirty years of age are eligible, has at present fourteen members. Eight must be taken from the learned professions, of whom six have to be lawyers, while of the rest five ought to be merchants. Every second year the offices and departments are re distributed, to be in most cases administered conjointly with deputies of the assembly. The president of the senate, chosen for two years, retains the old title of burgomaster. The members of the assembly, which participates in all public affairs, are elected for six years, and must be summoned at least six times a year, while a committee of thirty members meets every fortnight simultaneously with the periodical sessions of the senate. These truly democratic institutions have been scarcely at all modified by the resuscitation of the German empire under the king of Prussia. But evidently the ancient republic has lost some important attributes of a sovereign state by giving up its own military contingent, its right of levying customs, its coinage, its postal dues, its judicature, to the new national empire. On the other hand, it has preserved its municipal self-government and its own territory, the inhabitants of which now enjoy equal political privileges with the citizens. The territory, of about 5^ German square miles (116 Eng. sq. m.), partly extends towards the mouth of the river Trave, where the borough of Travemiinde has been the property of Liibeck since 1329, and partly consists of numerous villages, manors, farms, and corn, pasture, and forest lands scattered over the adjoining portions of the duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg. The manor and borough of Bergedorf on the Elbe, 1 German square miles, long held by Lubeck in common with Hamburg, was ceded to the latter by treaty of 1st July 1867. The lands which remain to Liibeck are thinly peopled, for, according to the census of 1875, of the total of 56,912 inhabitants 44,799 lived in Lubeck itself. The vast majority, 55,693, are Lutheran Protestants, whose service con tinues in the magnificent city churches, the cathedral, two parishes at Travemiinde, and the four country parishes. A celebrated high XV. 5