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The 'Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck' was a city-state that existed from 1226 to 1937 in the present-day German state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Contents

History

Imperial Free City and the Hanseatic League

The 19th century

Annexation

See also

History

Imperial Free City and the Hanseatic League

In 1226 Emperor Frederick II declared the city of Lübeck to be an Imperial Free City. In the 14th century Lübeck became the "Queen of the Hanseatic League", being by far the largest and most powerful member of this medieval trade organization.
Several conflicts about trade privileges were fought by Lübeck and the Hanseatic League against Denmark with varying outcomes. While Lübeck and the Hanseatic League prevailed in conflicts in 1435 and 1512, Lübeck lost when it became involved in the Count's Feud, a civil war that raged in Denmark from 1534 to 1536. Lübeck also joined the Schmalkaldic League. After defeat in Count's Feud, Lübeck's power slowly declined. Lübeck managed to remain neutral in the Thirty Years' War, but with the devastation of the decades-long war and the new transatlantic orientation of European trade, the Hanseatic League and thus Lübeck lost importance. After the Hanseatic League was de facto disbanded in 1669, Lübeck stayed an important trading town on the Baltic Sea.

The 19th century

Lübeck remained a Free Imperial City even after the German Mediatisation in 1803 and became a sovereign state after the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. In course of the war of the Fourth Coalition against Napoleon, troops under Bernadotte occupied the neutral Lübeck after a battle against Blücher on November 6th, 1806. Under the Continental System, trade suffered and from 1811 to 1813 Lübeck was formally annexed as part of the First French Empire.
The Vienna Congress of 1815 made Lübeck one of 39 sovereign states of the German Confederation. Lübeck became part of the North German Confederation in 1867 and became an autonomous state of the new-founded German Empire in 1871.

Annexation

In 1937 the Nazis passed the so-called Greater Hamburg Act, where the nearby Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg was expanded, to encompass towns that had formally belonged to the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein. To compensate Prussia for these losses (and partly because Hitler had a personal dislike for Lübeck), the 711-year-long independence of Lübeck came to an end as it was incorporated into Schleswig-Holstein.

See also

Lübeck (city)