Hanse ECU Lübeck

The Hanse ECU series was issued by Germany in the early 1990s as a politically charged cultural gesture — the ECU being the European Currency Unit that preceded the euro, and Lübeck being the dominant city of the medieval Hanseatic League for nearly three centuries. Germany's decision to celebrate the Hanse through ECU-denominated silver pieces was partly a soft argument for European monetary integration at a moment when the Maastricht Treaty ratification was genuinely contested. Lübeck's selection was logical: it held the title of *Haupt* of the League and hosted the Hansetag, the assembly that governed inter-city commerce across the Baltic.