Conflicts about property Ships and inheritances in Danzig and in the Hanse area (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries)

Making the transfer of property rights legal in a specific place has accordingly been an important task for institutions. The merchants from Deventer contested the property rights before a sequence of courts: the municipal court in Amsterdam, the regional Court of Holland and eventually the appellate court called the Great Council of Malines. Inheritances concern property rights related to immovable and movable property, including money. The notion that the most substantial part of a property, especially land, should be passed on to one main heir was present among the nobility. The property rights cases presented, relating to ships and inheritances, have been chosen because of the transregional connections which lay at their heart. The main conclusion which can be drawn is that a pluriform transregional context was apparently no hindrance in conducting trade, dispatching ships or living in various towns and trying to retrieve inheritances.