Hanseatic League, or about the middle of the 13th century, it became the chief depôt for the produce of the eastern Baltic countries, including, in a commercial sense, its daughter colony (11th century or earlier) of Novgorod the Great. Although Visby was an independent member of the Hanseatic League, the influence of Lübeck was paramount in the city, and half its governing body were men of German descent. Indeed, Björkander endeavours to prove that the city was a German (Hanseatic) foundation, dating principally from the middle of the 12th century. However that may be, the importance of Visby in the sea trade of the North is conclusively attested by the famous code of maritime law which bears its name. This Waterrecht dat de Kooplüde en de Schippers gemakt hebben to Visby (“sea-law which the merchants and seamen have made at Visby”) was a compilation based upon the Lübeck code, the Oleron code and the Amsterdam code, and was first printed in Low German in 1505, but in all probability had its origin about 1240, or not much later (see Sea Laws). By the middle of the 14th century the reputation of the wealth of the city was so great that, according to an old ballad, “the Gotlanders weighed out gold with stone weights and played with the choicest jewels. The swine ate out of silver troughs, and the women spun with distaffs of gold.” This fabled wealth was too strong a temptation for the energetic Valdemar Atterdag of Denmark. In 1361 he invaded the island, routed the defenders of Visby under the city walls (a monolithic cross marks the burial-place of the islanders who fell) and plundered the city. From this blow it never recovered, its decay being, however, materially helped by the fact that for the greater part of the next 150 years it was the stronghold of successive freebooters or sea-rovers—first, of the Hanseatic privateers called Vitalienbrödre or Viktualienbrüder, who made it their stronghold during the last eight years of the 14th century; then of the Teutonic Knights, whose Grand Master drove out the “Victuals Brothers,” and kept the island until it was redeemed by Queen Margaret. There too Erik XIII. (the Pomeranian), after being driven out of Denmark by his own subjects, established himself in 1437, and for a dozen years waged piracy upon Danes and Swedes alike. After him came Olaf and Ivar Thott, two Danish lords, who down to the year 1487 terrorized the seas from their pirates' stronghold of Visby. Lastly, the Danish admiral Sören Norrby, the last supporter of Christian I. of Denmark, when his master's cause was lost, waged a guerrilla war upon the Danish merchant ships and others from the same convenient base. But this led to an expedition by the men of Lübeck, who partly destroyed Visby in 1525. By the peace of Stettin (1570) Gotland was confirmed to the Danish crown, to which it had been given by Queen Margaret. But at the peace of Brömsebro in 1645 it was at length restored to Sweden, to which it has since belonged, except for the three years 1676-1679, when it was forcibly occupied by the Danes, and a few weeks in 1808, when the Russians landed a force.
The extreme wealth of the Gotlanders naturally fostered a spirit of independence, and their relations with Sweden were curious. The island at one period paid an annual tribute of 60 marks of silver to Sweden, but it was clearly recognized that it was paid by the desire of the Gotlanders, and not enforced by Sweden. The pope recognized their independence, and it was by their own free will that they came under the spiritual charge of the bishop of Linköping. Their local government was republican in form, and a popular assembly is indicated in the written Gotland Law, which dates not later than the middle of the 13th century. Sweden had no rights of objection to the measures adopted by this body, and there was no Swedish judge or other official in the island. Visby had a system of government and rights independent of, and in some measure opposed to, that of the rest of the island. It seems clear that there were at one time two separate corporations, for the native Gotlanders and the foreign traders respectively, and that these were subsequently fused. The rights and status of native Gotlanders were not enjoyed by foreigners as a whole—even intermarriage was illegal—but Germans, on account of their commercial pre-eminence in the island, were excepted.
See C. H. Bergman, Gotlands geografi och historia (Stockholm, 1898) and Gotländska skildringar och minnen (Visby, 1902); A. T. Snöbohm, Gotlands land och folk (Visby, 1897 et seq.); W. Moler, Bidrag till en Gotländsk bibliografi (Stockholm, 1890); Hans Hildebrand, Visby och dess Minnesmärken (Stockholm, 1892 et seq.); A. Björkander, Till Visby Stads Aeldstå Historia (1898), where most of the literature dealing with the subject is mentioned; but some of the author's arguments require criticism. For local government and rights see K. Hegel, Städter und Gilden im Mittelalter (book iii. ch. iii., Leipzig, 1891).
GOTO ISLANDS [Goto Retto, Gotto], a group of islands
belonging to Japan, lying west of Kiushiu, in 33° N., 129° E.
The southern of the two principal islands, Fukae-shima, measures
17 m. by 13½; the northern, Nakaori-shima, measures 23 m. by
7½. These islands lie almost in the direct route of steamers plying
between Nagasaki and Shanghai, and are distant some 50 m. from
Nagasaki. Some dome-shaped hills command the old castle-town
of Fukae. The islands are highly cultivated; deer and
other game abound, and trout are plentiful in the mountain
streams. A majority of the inhabitants are Christians.
GOTTER, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1746-1797), German poet
and dramatist, was born on the 3rd of September 1746, at Gotha.
After the completion of his university career at Göttingen, he
was appointed second director of the Archive of his native town,
and subsequently went to Wetzlar, the seat of the imperial law
courts, as secretary to the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha legation. In
1768 he returned to Gotha as tutor to two young noblemen, and
here, together with H. C. Boie, he founded the famous Göttinger
Musenalmanach. In 1770 he was once more in Wetzlar, where
he belonged to Goethe's circle of acquaintances. Four years
later he took up his permanent abode in Gotha, where he died on
the 18th of March 1797. Gotter was the chief representative of
French taste in the German literary life of his time. His own
poetry is elegant and polished, and in great measure free from the
trivialities of the Anacreontic lyric of the earlier generation of
imitators of French literature; but he was lacking in the imaginative
depth that characterizes the German poetic temperament.
His plays, of which Merope (1774), an adaptation in admirable
blank verse of the tragedies of Maffei and Voltaire, and Medea
(1775), a melodrame, are best known, were mostly based on
French originals and had considerable influence in counteracting
the formlessness and irregularity of the Sturm und Drang drama.
Gotter's collected Gedichte appeared in 2 vols. in 1787 and 1788; a third volume (1802) contains his Literarischer Nachlass. See B. Litzmann, Schröder und Gotter (1887), and R. Schlösser, F. W. Gotter, sein Leben und seine Werke (1894).
GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG, one of the chief German poets of the middle ages. The dates of his birth and death are alike unknown, but he was the contemporary of Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide, and his epic Tristan was written about the year 1210. In all probability he did not belong to the nobility, as he is entitled Meister, never Herr, by his contemporaries; his poem—the only work that can with any certainty be attributed to him bears witness to a learned education. The story of Tristan had been evolved from its shadowy Celtic origins by the French trouvères of the early 12th century, and had already found its way into Germany before the close of that century, in the crude, unpolished version of Eilhart von Oberge. It was Gottfried, however, who gave it its final form. His version is based not on that of Chrétien de Troyes, but on that of a trouvère Thomas, who seems to have been more popular with contemporaries. A comparison of the German epic with the French original is, however, impossible, as Chrétien's Tristan is entirely lost, and of Thomas's only a few fragments have come down to us. The story centres in the fatal voyage which Tristan, a vassal to the court of his uncle King Marke of Kurnewal (Cornwall), makes to Ireland to bring back Isolde as the king's bride. On the return voyage Tristan and Isolde drink by mistake a love potion, which binds them irrevocably to each other. The epic resolves itself into a series of love intrigues in which the two lovers ingeniously outwit the trusting king. They are ultimately discovered, and Tristan flees to Normandy where he marries another Isolde—"Isolde with the white hands"—
