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Concept
Hanseaten (class)
Summary
The Hanseaten (hanzeˈaːtn̩, Hanseatics) is a collective term for the hierarchy group (so called First Families) consisting of elite individuals and families of prestigious rank who constituted the ruling class of the free imperial city of Hamburg, conjointly with the equal First Families of the free imperial cities of Bremen and Lübeck. The members of these First Families were the persons in possession of hereditary grand burghership (Großbürgerschaft) of these cities, including the mayors (Bürgermeister), the senators (Senatoren), joint diplomats (Diplomaten) and the senior pastors (Hauptpastoren). Hanseaten refers specifically to the ruling families of Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen, but more broadly, this group is also referred to as patricians along with similar social groups elsewhere in continental Europe.
Since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the three cities have been officially named the "Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg" (Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg), the "Free Hanseatic City of Bremen" (Freie Hansestadt Bremen) and the "Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck" (Freie und Hansestadt Lübeck), the latter being simply known since 1937 as the "Hanseatic City of Lübeck". (Hansestadt Lübeck).
Hamburg was one of the oldest stringent civic republics, in which the Hanseatics preserved their constitutional privileges, which were granted in 1189 by Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, until the German Revolution of 1918–19 and the Weimar Constitution. Hamburg was strictly republican, but it was not a democracy, but rather an oligarchy.
The Hanseaten were regarded as being of equal rank to the (landed) nobility elsewhere in Europe, although the Hanseaten often regarded the (rural) nobility outside the city republics as inferior to the (urban and often more affluent, and in their own view, cultivated) Hanseaten. Thomas Mann, a member of a Lübeck Hanseatic family, portrayed this class in his novel Buddenbrooks (1901), principally for which he received the 1929 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Official source
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