Gdansk law
|
|
The Gdansk Law (German Danziger Willkuer; Polish Gdanski Wilkierz) was the official set of records of the laws of Gdansk, the capital city of the Royal Prussia. The models for the Gdansk Law were the statute books of the Holy Roman Empire and of other Hanseatic cities, especially Lübeck, a sister city of Gdansk.
The official copies of laws were certified by attaching seals (sigilla) as means of authentication. (The earliest known seal of the city of Gdansk of 1224 was inscribed, in capital letters, Sigillum Burgensium in Dantzike, Latin/German of the empire for "Seal of the burghers in Gdansk".)
The earliest known law code of Gdansk was entitled: "The Laws of the Sea and Trade City of Gdansk, 1597". The law codes of Gdansk were reprinted in 1732 by Seelmann in Gdansk, and occasionally thereafter in other places.
The Gdansk Law was supplanted, by laws of the Kingdom of Prussia, following the Prussian annexation of Gdansk in the 2nd Partition of Poland.