The Prehistory and Founding of the City

The area around Lübeck was inhabited by Slavic people in about 700 years. Many of the former Anglo-Saxon residents of the present Schleswig-Holstein had, during the centuries of migration, abandoned the site in favor of today’s England.

At the beginning of the 8th century, the ruler of France, Charles the Great, brought other people, and they founded the city of Liubice on the banks of the River Trave. Liubice became the most important of the cities of Slavic obituaries, but in 1129 it was burned down by the Rani people of Rügen.

In 1143, Adolf II of Schauenburg and Holstein founded the German city of Lübeck on the site of Bucu, whose name comes from the Slavic castle which was located at the place where the Burgkloster now lies. In 1158, Adolf II lost his castle on the site to Henrik Løve, who ruled Lübeck until 1181. He granted the city city rights in 1160 following the example of the city of Soest. It then became a free state city for a few years before the German-Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa set up a city council whose rule came into force in Lübeck until the 19th century.

Although the city had obtained its own city government, it was subject to changing rulers the following time. Until 1197 it belonged to the Duchy of Saxony, Holstein until 1217 and Denmark until 1227. From 1226, Emperor Frederick II had made Lübeck a free city state, and it retained it under various forms and rulers until 1937.

Around 1200, Lübeck became a shipping port for settlers who took to the Baltic areas which the Liveland Order and later the German Order conquered.

The Hanseatic League

In the 1300s, Lübeck became the so-called queen of the Hanseatic League. It was the most powerful and strongest member of trade cooperation. The Hanseatic cities extended from the original northern German cities to large parts of the Baltic Sea and later elsewhere in Northern Europe. In 1356, the first Hanseatic days were held in Lübeck.

In 1375, Emperor Charles IV appointed five wonders of the empire; Lübeck, Florence, Pisa, Rome and Venice.

Lübeck and the other cities of the Hanseatic League flourished, and enormous wealth went to and through the cities. The biggest challenge was the many battles against Denmark, whose cities were outside the Hanseatic League. Lübeck won conflicts with Denmark in 1435 and 1512, but became involved in the Danish civil war, the Count’s Feud, 1534-1536. Lübeck was on the losers’ side in the Count’s Feud, and then the city’s role slowly diminished.

In 1629, the peace in Lübeck was signed. The peace ended Denmark’s participation in the Thirty Years War, a war in which Lübeck managed to remain neutral.

The Hanseatic League held the last Hanseatic days in 1669, and then the old and formerly successful trade union was de facto dissolved. New trade routes across the Atlantic had arrived, but Lübeck’s position as a trading town in the Baltic Sea was maintained.

19th-century city-state and German Confederation

With the dissolution of the German-Roman Empire on August 6, 1806, Lübeck became a sovereign state for the first time. Already on November 6, the same year, French troops occupied the city after a battle against German troops led by Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher.

In the years that followed, Lübeck suffered commercially from the restrictions of the Continental Blockade imposed by France against England and its allies. In addition, from 1811 to 1813, Lübeck formally became part of the First French Empire. In 1813, Lübeck regained his status from before 1811, and after the Vienna Congress in 1815, Lübeck gained his status as a sovereign city state. Together with 38 other German states, the city was a member of the German Confederation, and from 1866 a part of the military alliance of the Northern German Confederation, which had Prussia as the leading state out of the 22 included.

In 1871, Lübeck became an autonomous part of the newly formed German Empire. At this time, approximately 52,000 inhabitants lived in the city, a number that grew to nearly 100,000 during the 19th century.

20th Century to Lübeck today

In 1937, the Nazi regime passed the law Law über Groß-Hamburg and other Gebietsbereinigungen. It included a swap of land between the states of Hamburg and Prussia. For Lübeck, that meant that the city’s freedom ended and most of the land was subject to the state of Schleswig-Holstein, which belonged to Prussia. A smaller part of Lübeck came under Mecklenburg.

During World War II, Lübeck was the first German city to suffer heavy aerial bombardments. The largest attack was launched on March 28, 1942, and Lübeck fell victim to a fire that ravaged and destroyed large parts of the Old Town; among others, most of the city’s great medieval churches. The city was conquered without resistance by British soldiers on May 2, 1945. During the war years, the city’s population increased from 150,000 in 1939 to around 220,000 after the war, one of the reasons being many new arrivals from the lost German eastern territories in 1945.

From 1945 the planning of the large-scale reconstruction could begin, and one of the earliest major projects became the largest church, the Marienkirche, which was largely rebuilt in 1947-1959. After several decades, the city was modernized and with many of the major buildings rebuilt. The restored historic district was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987.