Records of Low German Urban Diets
Municipal assemblies, also called »Tagfahrten«, were among the most important events in the political landscape of the Middle Ages and the early modern period. This is especially true for the cities dominated by Low German merchants, whose best-known and largest assemblies were the Hanseatic town assemblies.
Up to now, the Hanserezesse, the decision documents of the day journeys, have only been edited and published up to the year 1537 in the so-called »Hanserecesse«. The recesses that were created during the almost 70 assemblies up to the last Tagfahrt in 1669 are still hidden in the archives of the cities.
The archival tradition that has emerged from the town meetings is correspondingly extensive. The aim of the project is first of all to record the final documents of the assemblies with the recesses and to explore the possibilities of their indexing and publication. The resultsare being published here:
Our project is not limited to Hanse Town meetings. Tagfahrten are dealt with in their entire breadth and variety: from the overarching Hanse Town meetings to regional assemblies to meetings convened at short notice, from the beginning of the assembly of Low German cities in the 13th century to the end of the 17th century. In a first step, an inventory of the recesses of the town congresses will be compiled. The systematic recording of the manuscript tradition represents an important basis for further research into the culture of town meetings.
Building on this, concepts for the further indexing of the recess tradition will be developed. In particular, the diverse possibilities of digital publishing are to be taken into account. A first step in this direction is the Citizen Science project »Read.Hanse.Sources!«. The results of the project have been published and made accessible via a read&search-site. Another aspect that the project wants to deal with is the question of source studies on urban assembly records.