Hamburg Hamburg Germany

The origins of the bow and arrow are prehistoric; bone arrow points dating to sixty-one thousand years ago have been found at Sibudu Cave in South Africa.

Flint points by 16,000 BCE were being bound by sinews to split shafts.

Fletching was being practiced, with feathers glued and bound to shafts.

The rock paintings of Spain and the Sahara conclusively demonstrate the use of the bow and arrow by 8000 BCE.

The oldest indication for archery in Europe comes from the first actual bow fragments, found in the Stellmoor in the Ahrensburg valley north of Hamburg, Germany and date from the late Paleolithic about 9000-8000 BCE.

The Stellmoor bows from northern Germany were dated to about 8000 BCE but were burnt in Hamburg during the Second World War.

They were destroyed before Carbon 14 dating was invented and their age was attributed indirectly.

Charles establishes a Christian church in 811 at Hammaburg (Hamburg), where he constructs the Hammaburg fortress at the confluence of the Elbe and Alster rivers about sixty-eight miles (one hundred and ten kilometers) from the point at which the Elbe empties into the North Sea.

Ansgar, who in 831 had returned to Louis' court at Worms, had been appointed to the Archbishopric of Hamburg.

This is a new archbishopric with a see formed from those of Bremen and Verden, plus the right to send missions into all the northern lands and to consecrate bishops for them.

Ansgar had been consecrated in November 831, and, the arrangements having been at once approved by Gregory IV, he had gone to Rome to receive the pallium directly from the hands of the pope and to be named legate for the northern lands.

This commission had previously been bestowed upon Ebbo, Archbishop of Reims, but the jurisdiction is divided by agreement, with Ebbo retaining Sweden for himself.

For a time Ansgar devotes himself to the needs of his own diocese, which is still missionary territory with but a few churches.

He founds a monastery and a school in Hamburg; the school is intended to serve the Danish mission, but accomplishes little.

The Archbishopric of Hamburg, created in 843, is charged with the mission of Christianizing Scandinavia.

Hamburg had been elevated to an archbishopric by Pope Gregory IV in 831 on the initiative of Louis the Pious in order to oversee the Saxon territory and to support the introduction of Christianity to Scandinavia.

Hamburg had been united with Bremen two years later as the bishopric of Hamburg-Bremen.

The first bishop, Ansgar, will become known as the Apostle of the North.

Horik has refused to convert to Christianity, as it is his enemies' religion, and resists attempts by Bishop Ansgar to proselytize the Danes.

Six hundred Viking ships sail up the River Elbe in 845, sack Hamburg, at this time a town of around five hundred inhabitants, and destroy St. Mary's Cathedral.

The East Frankish king Louis the German in response sends a diplomatic mission, headed by Count Cobbo (one of two court counts), to the court of Horik, demanding of the Danish king that he submit to Frankish overlordship and pay reparations for the invasion.

Horik eventually agrees to the terms and requests a peace treaty with Louis, while also promising to turn back the treasure and captives from the raid.

Horik most likely wants to secure the border with Saxony as he faces a conflict with King Olof of Sweden and domestic struggles.

By the treaty, Louis demands Horik's obedience, which is further secured by Horik regularly sending embassies and gifts to Louis, and his suspension of support to Viking raiders.

In the same month that Louis the Younger defeats the Viking host at the Battle of Thimeon, a Saxon host commanded by Duke Bruno, the king's brother-in-law, suffers a heavy defeat near Hamburg, where Bruno and many other Saxon nobles fall.

As the example of the victory at Thimeon illustrates, however, no single military victory can stop the tide of Viking incursions.

A charter in 1189, given orally for Hamburg's backing of Frederick's crusades, grants Hamburg the status of an Imperial Free City and tax-free access up the Lower Elbe into the North Sea, including the right to fish, to cut trees and the freedom of military service.

A great fire on August 5, 1284, destroys all but one residential house in Hamburg.

The presence of Master Bertram, a native of Minden in Westphalia, is recorded in Hamburg from 1367, by which time he is apparently the city’s leading painter and where Bertram executes a sculpturesque altarpiece, bearing the date 1379, for Saint Peter’s Church, in which it will be erected in 1383.

The complex theological program of the altarpiece’s twenty-four naturalistically painted panels depict, in turn, the Creation; the story of Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Nativity; and the Infancy of Christ.

Master Bertram, a precursor of the realistic Flemish approach of the fifteenth century, and also of the 'soft style', may have some contact with Theodoric of Prague and with French art.

Two main altarpieces attributed to Master Francke, a painter in the Gothic international style, survive, dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury and Saint Barbara, in an unusually intense style, showing awareness of French and Early Netherlandish court art. (The rather earlier St. Barbara Altarpiece may have been commissioned for Finland, where it surfaced a century ago.)

He probably arrived in Hamburg after the death in 1415 of the previous leading artist there, Master Bertram, and shows little or no influence from him, but he may have been influenced by the more courtly style of Conrad von Soest, about ten years older than Francke, who worked to the south in Westphalia.

Master Francke displays the influence of the Limbourg Brothers’ Burgundian naturalism in his Saint Barbara Altarpiece, executed before 1424 in a style that combines elegant, stylized forms with realistic detail, particularly in the clothing and the physiognomy of the figures.

The "Barbara Altar" has also eight scenes, on both sides of the wings to a carved wood central panel by another artist.

At least two other panels are in museum collections.