Hanseatic North Germany

The Hanseatic maritime north — Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck. Its origin is commercial, not dynastic: the medieval Hanseatic League (13th–15th centuries), a confederation of trading towns dominating Baltic and North Sea commerce, gave these free cities a self-governing merchant-republic tradition that never fully feudalised. Mercantile, liberal, civic and outward-looking — marked by Low German speech, brick-Gothic townscapes and Protestant restraint — they were a long-standing counterweight to Prussian militarism. Hamburg and Bremen keep their free city-state status to this day; Hamburg remains Germany's great port and media city, and the north's social-democratic, cosmopolitan politics still set it apart from princely, militarised inland Germany.

• Existed: 1200 CE – present
• Type: Entity