Dortmund

Dortmund was an Imperial Free City in Westphalia and a leading centre of the Hanseatic League’s Rhine, Westphalia and Netherlands circle in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

By 1344 its merchants had lent money to Edward III of England against his crown. The city held out against the count of Mark and the archbishop of Cologne during an eighteen-month siege in 1388 and 1389. The Thirty Years’ War shattered its prosperity. Dortmund lost free-city status in 1803 and, after passing through Nassau-Orange-Fulda and Berg, went to Prussia in 1815.