Abstract

Founded in the 9th century Liubice was built as a Slavonic stronghold in the western parts of the Obodrits’ realm on a peninsula among the banks of the confluence of the river Trave and the river Schwartau. Due to its geographic location with access to the Baltic Sea and to hinterland trading routes, Liubice was connected to Saxony, Scandinavia and the Eastern Baltics. Being embedded in this multi-cultural zone and in an early medieval trading network, it developed from a single fortified place into a princely residence with a strong mercantile character at the end of the 11th century. It had two churches and was a primarily place for Christian missionary ambitions. But was it then an emporium like other famous ones or was it something different? Was it just a trade-focussed settlement or did it had more of an urban structure, an urban use of space or even a kind of urban identity? Is there a different conceptualisation and organisation of space, housing culture and infrastructure like in the German Lübeck that was founded in 1143 only 5 km south of Liubice? Are there any differences or even similarities? Do we have to see Lübeck therefore as a successor or as a shifted transformation of an urban idea that rose in the melting pot area of Slavs, Saxons and Scandinavians?