In the following fictional discussion, a Nazi, a communist and a young Polish woman argue about what the Hanseatic League was and is for Gdansk. The script for this discussion was written by journalist Noa Rodler-Bork based on interviews and research on the framing of the Hanseatic League in Gdansk. The statements are not direct quotations.
The interviewees were:
Prof. Dr. Peter Oliver Loew, Director of the German-Poland-Institute in Darmstadt
Prof. Jörg Linowitzki, Head of the Haus Hansestadt Danzig in Lübeck
Dr. hab. Katarzyna Lukas, Research Associate in the Institute of German Studies at the University of Gdansk
Borys Szymanski, International Relations student from the Gdansk area
One example of how the Hanseatic League was instrumentalized is the privateer Paul Beneke. Paul Beneke was a German Hanseatic privateer captain and town councillor of Gdansk in the 15th century. During the Hanseatic war against England, he destroyed and captured several English ships. Beneke became particularly famous for stealing a triptych depicting the Last Judgment from a merchant ship sailing under the English flag in 1473 while serving as captain of the ‘Peter von Danzig‘. The artwork is still on display today in the National Museum in Gdansk.
The Nazis liked to make use of the name of the Hanseatic captain Paul Beneke for propaganda reasons. For example, a ship of the German Navy built in 1936 was named after him. In 1959, the ship’s name was changed from ‘Paul Beneke‘ to ‘Tabu‘.
Even more striking was the Paul Beneke Youth Hostel, which was built on the Bishops’ Hill in Gdansk between 1938 and 1940 and was intended to serve as a visible symbol of the city’s German identity. The building was mainly used by the Hitler Youth and the German Wehrmacht. On 6 May 1941, Adolf Hitler himself visited the youth hostel.
After Soviet troops occupied the building in 1945, ideologically motivated destruction followed. Almost everything associated with German identity was destroyed or removed, for example, wall and window decorations or wood carvings. A memorial plaque installed during the communist era of the People’s Republic of Poland stated: ‘From this place, Army General Pawel Batow, twice hero of the Soviet Union, commanded the 65th Army of the 2nd Belorussian Front during the battle for the liberation of Gdansk in March 1945.‘ The plaque was removed in 2018 on the orders of the Institute of National Remembrance.
Today, the building is no longer freely accessible as it is used by the police. However, a few traces of its eventful history still exist. In addition to Russian inscriptions carved into the inner window frames of the tower, there is also a faded outline of a Hanseatic cog engraved into the stone slabs in front of the entrance gate.
