Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
I am very interested in the development of the Hanseatic League that existed in Northern Europe starting about the middle of the twelfth century. It rose in economic power and influenced many city states and countries during the period of the Middle Ages. I am also interested in the rise of the Medieval period or aka the Middle ages. The advancement of civilization, during this period boggles the mind.
I am very interested in learning how it would be possible to be able to target stamps that highlight these periods of growth, and episodes of history, if it is all possible. This would be a rewarding project for me to work on.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
Joel Grebin
Login to Like
this post
If this is stamp-related, I assume you mean topically speaking.
If achievement, you'll want to explore Gallileo for the stars; explore alchemy (a dead end, but still...); Medici for politics; look at the transition from purely religious art to painting with religious themes that are really portraits of the patrons; Thallis and Brumel and von Bingen for liturgical music; da Vinci for architecture and aeronaumics; the Moors for their influence in Iberian architecture and music; the Turks for the geopolitical realignments they caused; the Crusades; the Knights Hopitalier and Knights of Malta for aescetic militarism; Joan of Arc; the great Scottish leaders Wallace and Bruce; the great English and Welsh antagonists, Owain Gwynnedd and Edward Longshanks; Henry V at Agincourt (and the development of the longbow). None of these are part of the Hanseatic League, of which I am completely ignorant, but all qualify as important elements of the advancement of art, armor, and politics.
David
Login to Like
this post
Thanks, David, it is stamp related. I am trying to recall my college Humanities courses. There's always the library and the internet.
Login to Like
this post
Hi Joel,
I have a similar interest / fascination for the Middle Ages and started a medieval theme collection some time ago. It is still in an accumulation phase, right now I pick stamps that have anything to do with the Middle Ages and put them in a stockbook, grouped by theme.
I have pages with castles and other architectural features, manuscript illuminations, famous persons from the period (like Hildegard von Bingen), Vikings, monks, objects etc.
Do i have a plan, no. I just take the stamps that I like. 
The only exception is that I do not want the 'fake' stamps from countries like Guyana, Tanzania and/or Dunes.
At some point I will try to make it more like a story, now it is just the fun of finding and collecting them.
Login to Like
this post
Thanks for your timely reply, Jan-Simon. I would add to that list art, weapons, growth of cities and mercantile development. The Hanseatic League also started at about the same time as the early Renaissance. The league stressed economic development and seems to go hand in hand with the Renaissance. I have located maps of the early league routes. My question however, is, what is the source of the stamps that you are collecting for your project?
Joel
Login to Like
this post
Joel-
You have at least a few alternatives, or adjuncts, to the purely topical collection.
A handful of the free cities in the League issued stamps right at the very end of the League's existence (though long after it had flourished). Hamburg is easy to find; Bremen and Lubeck aren't terribly hard to find, but they can be a little pricier.
Danzig certainly had a connection, but I'm pretty sure that connection was over by the time it started issuing stamps. Still...
You could also go for CDS cancels from the various cities. Early German cancels are often quite bold, and you could run across many stamps from the cities with very little effort. This would be after the demise of the League, but it still may have a rational connection, depending upon how you define what you want to do.
Food for thought...
Collin
Login to Like
this post
Joel,it depends on definition, but as far as I am aware the earliest forms of the Renaissance are a few centuries later than the start of the Hanseatic League. And that is without mentioning that the Renaissance started in southern Europe where the Hanse was something happening in the north.
But... answering your question: I pick the stamps from my normal trades and when I go to stampclubmeetings where there is trading I look for stamps featuring medieval subjects besides the normal items I look for (the umpteen countries I collect...)
Jan-Simon
Login to Like
this post
Hi Joel,
Riga, Latvia was also a Hanseatic City and an important trading hub for the Russian interior. A large number of Latvia's post-independence (1991 and later) stamps feature themes that you'd be looking for, including stamps celebrating the 800th anniversary of the founding of Riga. If you're interested at all, drop me an email at busmanis(at)primus(dot)ca and I might be able to help you out in that regard.
Best regards,
Andrew
Login to Like
this post
Thanks everyone for the very informative and useful suggestions regarding these two topics. I ahve been interested in the Hanseatic League for several years and at this stage of my life I wish to develop a collection regarding the League and its enterprises. Regarding the Medieval period, I am astounded at the growth of culture and civilization during this period and there seems to be a connection with economic growth and culture which to come together at the same times and places in man's history.
If you all don't mind, I would like to be able to remain in contact with you while I develop these areas. Thanks
Joel
Login to Like
this post
This information is collateral to your interest in the Hanseatic League, Joel, but you might find it interesting and perhaps even useful.
Lubeck was the first city in history to be targeted for "area" or "carpet" bombing. In the early years of the Second World War, the RAF had had a dismal record of striking individual German industrial targets early in the war. If they managed to drop bombs anywhere near their targets, the bombs, many of them dating from the First World War, did little damage. Often, however, aircrew were unable to even find their targets, and better-trained and better-equipped German pilots were decimating Bomber Command.
In 1942 the policy against bombing civilians was changed when the RAF, under its new commander, Air Marshall Arthur Travers Harris, developed a strategy which, it was hoped, would shatter entire cities with high explosive bombs, and then burn them with incendiaries. Harris believed, and managed to convince Churchill, that area bombing, by "de-housing" German workers, would shatter their morale. In theory, they would turn on the Nazis and force an early end to the war.
Lubeck was chosen for the first "experiment" largely because of its ancient city centre of wood buildings and narrow, winding streets. The raids over several nights were less successful than hoped, but Lubeck suffered grievous damage, losing many classic Medieval buildings, including a famous cathedral.
The nearby city of Rostock was chosen for the next area bombing raid, with similar result, and the die was cast: Over the course of the war, as you know, scores of German cities were leveled by the RAF, which was joined in some cases such as Dresden by the American 8th Air Force. There is no question that area bombing reduced Germans' ability to fight, and somewhat hastened the end of the war, but the economic and social costs to both the Allies and the Germans were staggering.
There is no evidence that the bombing did anything to destroy the Germans' will to fight; if anything, the raids caused the German people to despise the British and work even harder to beat them. It's surprising that the British ever thought that bombing people could have any other result: the London Blitz in 1940 only hardened British will to survive and beat the Germans.
Here is a set of two East German stamps; one shows the skyline of Rostock in Medieval times, the other showing the (ugly) results of Soviet reconstruction after the war.
There may well be modern German stamps celebrating Lubeck's history.
Bob Ingraham
(Message edited by Bobstamp on October 22, 2009)
Login to Like
this post
unfortunately it ugly reconstruction has not been confined to the Soviet (or rather the East Germans), walk through a city like Cologne or Hamburg and you will find many sights similar to the one on the second stamp.
I am pretty sure there are many stamps showing Lubeck.
I found one after a quick search on the internet
and a few other interesting ones: 
Login to Like
this post
Hello Jan-Simon,
I followed your suggestion about pulling stamps from usual sources. I was handling a lot of Swedish Stamps today and I came across a set of six stamps from 1984, Scott 1508-1513 and they are medieval towns, that I am going to mount in topical collection of the type that I have described in this thread. Its great to have an early positive experience when starting a new enterprise. I wanted to share this with you and others that have been postive about this endeavor of mine. I also will contact in the next few days some other contributors to this thread. Thank you again.
Joel
Login to Like
this post
Joel,
I've seen some excellent suggestions and information already posted in reply to your query. As someone who has an interest in an unusual, but very different, area of thematic/topical collecting, I thought I'd add my two cents as well.
The most useful piece of advice, and one that I think you've already hinted at, is having a good knowledge base on your topic of interest - this lets you identify stamps you'd interested in much easier. Sometimes, after reading a book or article on the subject I'm interested in (toxicology) I'll go back through my collection or through catalogs and find stamps that fit really well into my topic that I hadn't thought of before. This may not be “targeting”, per se, but it does help me identify stamps that will be of interest when I see them.
Narrowing my advice a little further, on your topic of the Middle Ages there's the starting point of identifying exactly *what* your definition and interest is. For example, in regards to dates, do you want to include the Renaissance or the Viking Age, both usually considered specific periods within the Middle Ages? In regards to geography, do you restrict yourself to European history or do you have an interest in other cultures at the same time period? And finally, do you really want to collect **all** aspects of the Middle Ages – or are there areas of interest (architecture, personalities, folklore, art & music,specif events, legal documents, etc.) that appeal to you more than others? This last point is likely to change over time and what you find available– I know mine has. The more you know exactly what you want, the easier it is for someone else to tell you if they have something of interest for you.
As for your interest in the Hanseatic League, I found myself looking up info on the Hansa while doing some background reading into some Danish stamps I have. [As a bit of an aside, even Wikipedia has interesting short articles on the postal histories of Lubeck and Bergedorf.] As previously mentioned, even if the HL, for all intents, died out during the modern era (its last formal meeting took place in the 17th century, and it supposedly “officially” disbanded in the 19th) many of the cities themselves are still around, although some with different names. Some cities have even continued to style themselves as Hanse cities (or “free and Hanseatic” cities) long after the demise of the League. There is also a New Hansa (founded in 1980) that holds a festival in a different member city each year. All of this is to say that you could still collect covers/postmarks/stamps issued from “official” (depending on your definition) Hanse cities.
As far as finding stamps with subjects regarding the HL, I'm sure there are at least a few issues specifically designed to honor the League itself, given it's longevity and cultural significance. I think Germany may have issued one in 2006 celebrating the League's 650th anniversary. I'm sure many stamps also feature images of structures tied to the Hansa, especially since many are probably UNESCO world heritage sites. For example, I know the Tyskebryggen (German wharf) in Bergen, Norway has been featured on at least a couple of Norwegian stamps. More background research in this area would probably make this type of targeted searching easier.
If you really want an involved project, I think a really neat idea would be to try making your own covers to mimic major historical trading routes throughout the League (e.g., send a cover from Bergen to Lubeck, preferably with a fish-themed stamp and/or cache). Probably too much trouble, but would be a nice example of thinking outside the box.
I know at least some of the above is a repeat of what others have said, and other parts might be too general to be useful. But I hope at least some of it was helpful. Have fun collecting!
- Glenn
Login to Like
this post
Hello Glenn,
Thank you for your interest and informed response. The title “targeting stamps” was an attempt at being able to identify stamps that illustrate these two topics. In reading all of the responses on this message board, particularly Jan-Simon”s, I found a procedure for obtaining stamps as well as refining my search of these topics.
Since I collect worldwide, and realizing that two topics seem to be originating from European countries, it would seem logical to collect starting with those countries where the HL began and upward and outward in an inverted pyramid collecting scheme, at least to start, and change as necessary. The same thinking applies at present to the Renaissance or Medieval Period. It is a direction to start with.
About 30 years ago, I came across two or three very well written articles in National Geographic, one regarding the HL and the other, the Vikings march eastward through Russia to Constantinople, and the lasting effects each of these developments on the whole of Europe. The origins seem to have been in the twelfth century for both. One in northern Europe, Germany, and the other in Italy. I have never forgotten these articles and have identified the time of publication from Geogtaphic. Also several novels have been written which I have read and the History Channel has had many programs about the Medieval period, the Vikings and Castles which have reinforced my desire to move forward with this project.
Regarding the topics for collecting purposes for the Mediaeval period as you and others have already mentioned, art, architecture, rise of cities, trades, religion and many others that will probably emerge as I move along.
The HL on the other hand will have stamps and postmarks and covers encompassing the Leagues enterprise, some of which has already been mentioned in this message board.
As far as the time frames, I realize that beginnings of these developments come together from previous activities and coalesce and move forward from an agreed upon a generally accepted starting point. The present builds on the past and the future builds on the present.
That’s about what I have for now, but probably will be in contact with you again.
Joel
Login to Like
this post
02:55:15pm
Hello,
I am very interested in the development of the Hanseatic League that existed in Northern Europe starting about the middle of the twelfth century. It rose in economic power and influenced many city states and countries during the period of the Middle Ages. I am also interested in the rise of the Medieval period or aka the Middle ages. The advancement of civilization, during this period boggles the mind.
I am very interested in learning how it would be possible to be able to target stamps that highlight these periods of growth, and episodes of history, if it is all possible. This would be a rewarding project for me to work on.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
Joel Grebin
Login to Like
this post
re: Hanseatic League
If this is stamp-related, I assume you mean topically speaking.
If achievement, you'll want to explore Gallileo for the stars; explore alchemy (a dead end, but still...); Medici for politics; look at the transition from purely religious art to painting with religious themes that are really portraits of the patrons; Thallis and Brumel and von Bingen for liturgical music; da Vinci for architecture and aeronaumics; the Moors for their influence in Iberian architecture and music; the Turks for the geopolitical realignments they caused; the Crusades; the Knights Hopitalier and Knights of Malta for aescetic militarism; Joan of Arc; the great Scottish leaders Wallace and Bruce; the great English and Welsh antagonists, Owain Gwynnedd and Edward Longshanks; Henry V at Agincourt (and the development of the longbow). None of these are part of the Hanseatic League, of which I am completely ignorant, but all qualify as important elements of the advancement of art, armor, and politics.
David
Login to Like
this post
07:13:38pm
re: Hanseatic League
Thanks, David, it is stamp related. I am trying to recall my college Humanities courses. There's always the library and the internet.
Login to Like
this post
Approvals
re: Hanseatic League
Hi Joel,
I have a similar interest / fascination for the Middle Ages and started a medieval theme collection some time ago. It is still in an accumulation phase, right now I pick stamps that have anything to do with the Middle Ages and put them in a stockbook, grouped by theme.
I have pages with castles and other architectural features, manuscript illuminations, famous persons from the period (like Hildegard von Bingen), Vikings, monks, objects etc.
Do i have a plan, no. I just take the stamps that I like. The only exception is that I do not want the 'fake' stamps from countries like Guyana, Tanzania and/or Dunes.
At some point I will try to make it more like a story, now it is just the fun of finding and collecting them.
Login to Like
this post
09:57:03am
re: Hanseatic League
Thanks for your timely reply, Jan-Simon. I would add to that list art, weapons, growth of cities and mercantile development. The Hanseatic League also started at about the same time as the early Renaissance. The league stressed economic development and seems to go hand in hand with the Renaissance. I have located maps of the early league routes. My question however, is, what is the source of the stamps that you are collecting for your project?
Joel
Login to Like
this post
re: Hanseatic League
Joel-
You have at least a few alternatives, or adjuncts, to the purely topical collection.
A handful of the free cities in the League issued stamps right at the very end of the League's existence (though long after it had flourished). Hamburg is easy to find; Bremen and Lubeck aren't terribly hard to find, but they can be a little pricier.
Danzig certainly had a connection, but I'm pretty sure that connection was over by the time it started issuing stamps. Still...
You could also go for CDS cancels from the various cities. Early German cancels are often quite bold, and you could run across many stamps from the cities with very little effort. This would be after the demise of the League, but it still may have a rational connection, depending upon how you define what you want to do.
Food for thought...
Collin
Login to Like
this post
Approvals
re: Hanseatic League
Joel,it depends on definition, but as far as I am aware the earliest forms of the Renaissance are a few centuries later than the start of the Hanseatic League. And that is without mentioning that the Renaissance started in southern Europe where the Hanse was something happening in the north.
But... answering your question: I pick the stamps from my normal trades and when I go to stampclubmeetings where there is trading I look for stamps featuring medieval subjects besides the normal items I look for (the umpteen countries I collect...)
Jan-Simon
Login to Like
this post
re: Hanseatic League
Hi Joel,
Riga, Latvia was also a Hanseatic City and an important trading hub for the Russian interior. A large number of Latvia's post-independence (1991 and later) stamps feature themes that you'd be looking for, including stamps celebrating the 800th anniversary of the founding of Riga. If you're interested at all, drop me an email at busmanis(at)primus(dot)ca and I might be able to help you out in that regard.
Best regards,
Andrew
Login to Like
this post
09:28:52am
re: Hanseatic League
Thanks everyone for the very informative and useful suggestions regarding these two topics. I ahve been interested in the Hanseatic League for several years and at this stage of my life I wish to develop a collection regarding the League and its enterprises. Regarding the Medieval period, I am astounded at the growth of culture and civilization during this period and there seems to be a connection with economic growth and culture which to come together at the same times and places in man's history.
If you all don't mind, I would like to be able to remain in contact with you while I develop these areas. Thanks
Joel
Login to Like
this post
re: Hanseatic League
This information is collateral to your interest in the Hanseatic League, Joel, but you might find it interesting and perhaps even useful.
Lubeck was the first city in history to be targeted for "area" or "carpet" bombing. In the early years of the Second World War, the RAF had had a dismal record of striking individual German industrial targets early in the war. If they managed to drop bombs anywhere near their targets, the bombs, many of them dating from the First World War, did little damage. Often, however, aircrew were unable to even find their targets, and better-trained and better-equipped German pilots were decimating Bomber Command.
In 1942 the policy against bombing civilians was changed when the RAF, under its new commander, Air Marshall Arthur Travers Harris, developed a strategy which, it was hoped, would shatter entire cities with high explosive bombs, and then burn them with incendiaries. Harris believed, and managed to convince Churchill, that area bombing, by "de-housing" German workers, would shatter their morale. In theory, they would turn on the Nazis and force an early end to the war.
Lubeck was chosen for the first "experiment" largely because of its ancient city centre of wood buildings and narrow, winding streets. The raids over several nights were less successful than hoped, but Lubeck suffered grievous damage, losing many classic Medieval buildings, including a famous cathedral.
The nearby city of Rostock was chosen for the next area bombing raid, with similar result, and the die was cast: Over the course of the war, as you know, scores of German cities were leveled by the RAF, which was joined in some cases such as Dresden by the American 8th Air Force. There is no question that area bombing reduced Germans' ability to fight, and somewhat hastened the end of the war, but the economic and social costs to both the Allies and the Germans were staggering.
There is no evidence that the bombing did anything to destroy the Germans' will to fight; if anything, the raids caused the German people to despise the British and work even harder to beat them. It's surprising that the British ever thought that bombing people could have any other result: the London Blitz in 1940 only hardened British will to survive and beat the Germans.
Here is a set of two East German stamps; one shows the skyline of Rostock in Medieval times, the other showing the (ugly) results of Soviet reconstruction after the war.
There may well be modern German stamps celebrating Lubeck's history.
Bob Ingraham
(Message edited by Bobstamp on October 22, 2009)
Login to Like
this post
Approvals
re: Hanseatic League
unfortunately it ugly reconstruction has not been confined to the Soviet (or rather the East Germans), walk through a city like Cologne or Hamburg and you will find many sights similar to the one on the second stamp.
I am pretty sure there are many stamps showing Lubeck.
I found one after a quick search on the internet
and a few other interesting ones:
Login to Like
this post
10:13:20pm
re: Hanseatic League
Hello Jan-Simon,
I followed your suggestion about pulling stamps from usual sources. I was handling a lot of Swedish Stamps today and I came across a set of six stamps from 1984, Scott 1508-1513 and they are medieval towns, that I am going to mount in topical collection of the type that I have described in this thread. Its great to have an early positive experience when starting a new enterprise. I wanted to share this with you and others that have been postive about this endeavor of mine. I also will contact in the next few days some other contributors to this thread. Thank you again.
Joel
Login to Like
this post
05:43:46pm
re: Hanseatic League
Joel,
I've seen some excellent suggestions and information already posted in reply to your query. As someone who has an interest in an unusual, but very different, area of thematic/topical collecting, I thought I'd add my two cents as well.
The most useful piece of advice, and one that I think you've already hinted at, is having a good knowledge base on your topic of interest - this lets you identify stamps you'd interested in much easier. Sometimes, after reading a book or article on the subject I'm interested in (toxicology) I'll go back through my collection or through catalogs and find stamps that fit really well into my topic that I hadn't thought of before. This may not be “targeting”, per se, but it does help me identify stamps that will be of interest when I see them.
Narrowing my advice a little further, on your topic of the Middle Ages there's the starting point of identifying exactly *what* your definition and interest is. For example, in regards to dates, do you want to include the Renaissance or the Viking Age, both usually considered specific periods within the Middle Ages? In regards to geography, do you restrict yourself to European history or do you have an interest in other cultures at the same time period? And finally, do you really want to collect **all** aspects of the Middle Ages – or are there areas of interest (architecture, personalities, folklore, art & music,specif events, legal documents, etc.) that appeal to you more than others? This last point is likely to change over time and what you find available– I know mine has. The more you know exactly what you want, the easier it is for someone else to tell you if they have something of interest for you.
As for your interest in the Hanseatic League, I found myself looking up info on the Hansa while doing some background reading into some Danish stamps I have. [As a bit of an aside, even Wikipedia has interesting short articles on the postal histories of Lubeck and Bergedorf.] As previously mentioned, even if the HL, for all intents, died out during the modern era (its last formal meeting took place in the 17th century, and it supposedly “officially” disbanded in the 19th) many of the cities themselves are still around, although some with different names. Some cities have even continued to style themselves as Hanse cities (or “free and Hanseatic” cities) long after the demise of the League. There is also a New Hansa (founded in 1980) that holds a festival in a different member city each year. All of this is to say that you could still collect covers/postmarks/stamps issued from “official” (depending on your definition) Hanse cities.
As far as finding stamps with subjects regarding the HL, I'm sure there are at least a few issues specifically designed to honor the League itself, given it's longevity and cultural significance. I think Germany may have issued one in 2006 celebrating the League's 650th anniversary. I'm sure many stamps also feature images of structures tied to the Hansa, especially since many are probably UNESCO world heritage sites. For example, I know the Tyskebryggen (German wharf) in Bergen, Norway has been featured on at least a couple of Norwegian stamps. More background research in this area would probably make this type of targeted searching easier.
If you really want an involved project, I think a really neat idea would be to try making your own covers to mimic major historical trading routes throughout the League (e.g., send a cover from Bergen to Lubeck, preferably with a fish-themed stamp and/or cache). Probably too much trouble, but would be a nice example of thinking outside the box.
I know at least some of the above is a repeat of what others have said, and other parts might be too general to be useful. But I hope at least some of it was helpful. Have fun collecting!
- Glenn
Login to Like
this post
08:38:34pm
re: Hanseatic League
Hello Glenn,
Thank you for your interest and informed response. The title “targeting stamps” was an attempt at being able to identify stamps that illustrate these two topics. In reading all of the responses on this message board, particularly Jan-Simon”s, I found a procedure for obtaining stamps as well as refining my search of these topics.
Since I collect worldwide, and realizing that two topics seem to be originating from European countries, it would seem logical to collect starting with those countries where the HL began and upward and outward in an inverted pyramid collecting scheme, at least to start, and change as necessary. The same thinking applies at present to the Renaissance or Medieval Period. It is a direction to start with.
About 30 years ago, I came across two or three very well written articles in National Geographic, one regarding the HL and the other, the Vikings march eastward through Russia to Constantinople, and the lasting effects each of these developments on the whole of Europe. The origins seem to have been in the twelfth century for both. One in northern Europe, Germany, and the other in Italy. I have never forgotten these articles and have identified the time of publication from Geogtaphic. Also several novels have been written which I have read and the History Channel has had many programs about the Medieval period, the Vikings and Castles which have reinforced my desire to move forward with this project.
Regarding the topics for collecting purposes for the Mediaeval period as you and others have already mentioned, art, architecture, rise of cities, trades, religion and many others that will probably emerge as I move along.
The HL on the other hand will have stamps and postmarks and covers encompassing the Leagues enterprise, some of which has already been mentioned in this message board.
As far as the time frames, I realize that beginnings of these developments come together from previous activities and coalesce and move forward from an agreed upon a generally accepted starting point. The present builds on the past and the future builds on the present.
That’s about what I have for now, but probably will be in contact with you again.
Joel
Login to Like
this post