Stade (Allemagne)

Stade (ˈʃtaːdə), officially the Hanseatic City of Stade (Hansestadt Stade, Hansestadt Stood) is a city in Lower Saxony in northern Germany. First mentioned in records in 934, it is the seat of the district (Landkreis) which bears its name. It is located roughly to the west of Hamburg and belongs to that city's wider metropolitan region. Within the area of the city are the urban districts of Bützfleth, Hagen, Haddorf and Wiepenkathen, each of which have a council (Ortsrat) of their own with some autonomous decision-making rights. Stade is located in the lower regions of the river Elbe. It is also on the German Timber-Frame Road. The first human settlers came to the Stade area in 30,000 BC. Since 1180 Stade belonged to the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen. In early 1208 King Valdemar II of Denmark and his troops conquered Stade. In August Valdemar II's cousin being in enmity with the king, the then Prince-Archbishop Valdemar reconquered the city only to lose it soon after again to Valdemar II. In 1209 Emperor Otto IV persuaded his ally Valdemar II to withdraw into the north of the Elbe, and the deposed Prince-Archbishop Valdemar took Stade. On 2 May 1209 Otto IV granted important town privileges (Stadtrecht) to Stade. Otto IV confirmed the burghers to be personally free and recognised them constituting a political entity of their own law, the burgenses and optimi cives of Stade. Property within the municipal boundaries could not be subjected to feudal overlordship and was to be freely inherited without feudal claims to reversion. Fair juridical procedures were constituted and maximal fines fixed. Otto IV obliged himself to prevent burghers from being taken as hostages and to liberate captured burghers. After Otto IV had changed his mind and reinvested Prince-Archbishop Valdemar with the See in 1211, Valdemar II recaptured Stade. In 1213 Otto's elder brother Count Palatine Henry V of the Rhine, reconquered Stade for the Prince-Archbishop. In 1215 Henry repelled another Danish attack on Stade.