Trading City and Ducal Capital in The Holy Roman Empire (1164/81-1630)
In the second half of the 12th century, a group of German tradesmen (from various parts of the Holy Roman Empire) settled in the city around St. Jacob's Church, which was founded by Beringer, a trader from Bamberg, and consecrated in 1187. After the 1164 Verchen battle, Stettin dukes joined in to Saxony and in 1181 Stettin became part of the Holy Roman Empire. For centuries the dukes invited West and Central German settlers to colonize Pomeranian wastelands and to found towns and villages (see Ostsiedlung). Duke Barnim of Pomerania granted a local government charter to this community in 1237, separating the Germans from the Slavic majority community settled around the St. Nicholas Church (in the neighborhoods of Chyzin, Uber-Wiken, and Unter-Wiken). Barnim granted Stettin Magdeburg rights in 1243. Around that time the major ethnic group of the city had become German, while the Slavic population decreased.
Stettin joined the Hanseatic League in 1278. By the 1630s the city and surrounding area that hadn't been already German had become completely Germanized. From 1295–1464 Stettin was the capital of a splinter Pomeranian realm known as the Pomerania-Stettin. (Its Dukes were Otto I, Barnim III the Great, Casimir III, Swantibor I, Boguslaw VII, Otto II, Casimir V, Joachim I the Younger, Otto III.)
In the 13th and 14th centuries the town became the main Pomeranian centre of trade in grains, salt and herrings, receiving various trading privileges from their dukes (known as emporium rights). It was granted special rights and trading posts in Denmark, and belonged to the Hanseatic trading cities union. In 1390 trade privileges were granted to Stettin by the Polish king Ladislaus Jagiello who established new trade routes from Poland to the Pomeranian ports. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Stettin conducted several trade wars with the neighboring cities of Gartz, Greifenberg (Gryfino) and Stargard (Stargard Szczeciński) over a monopoly on grains export. The grain supplying area was not only Pomerania but also Brandenburg and Greater Poland — trade routes along the Oder and Warta rivers. The 16th century saw the decline of the city's trading position because of the competition of the nobility, as well as church institutions in the grains exports, a customs war with Frankfurt (Oder), and the fall of the herring market. Social and religious riots marked the introduction of the Protestant Reformation in 1534.
In 1570, the northern Seven Years' War was ended in Stettin by the Treaty of Stettin (1570).
Read more about this topic: History Of Szczecin
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