Seafarer's Guild Lübeck

The history of the building and the foundation of the Seafarers’ fraternity stretches far back into Hanseatic times. Even today, numerous traces of the past can be discovered here. For example, when you sit down to eat, you will be sitting at long tables made of old ship’s planks, called Gelagen in German.  Gelage has come to mean a drunken get-together. But originally it was the name for the narrow oak tables with high-backed benches where the Hanseatics always enjoyed rubbing shoulders together (and drinking which explains how it comes to mean a drinking session). These were the regular places occupied by merchants who were organised in “companies” – depending on where their trading routes in the Baltic Sea led them. The Novgorod traders brought furs, wax and honey by ship from Russia, the Scania traders herring which was of special significance as Lenten fare. Traders to Sweden had ores on board and those going to Bergen supplied dried cod, the coveted stockfish from Norway. Fabric and finished metal goods came from England and Flanders. Even 500 years ago, the coats of arms on the sides of the benches already determined the seating order, and every seaman had his seat.

Not only benefactors from the ranks of councillors and merchants took care of the needy; fraternities of tradesmen and seafarers also looked after their brothers and their families who had fallen on hard times. For example, the Seafarer's Guild in Lübeck which was founded in 1401 as the St. Nicholas Fraternity “to help and comfort the living and the dead and all those who seek their honest living in seafaring”. For example, the seafarers’ fraternity created living space for old, needy people in the neighbourhood of the house where they congregated, and took care of their living costs. At the beginning of of the 20th century, a seafarers’ courtyard was constructed in Engelsgrube which to this day offers widows of captains a comfortable home.