User-submitted Reference

The Hansal surname may come from Hansa cities. The Hanseatic League is a unique phenomenon of German history. The co-operation and mergers of merchants for the promotion of their trade abroad gave rise to a town covenant, which in its heyday comprised of nearly 200 sea and inner cities.

These cities were located in an area that are nowadays comprised of seven European countries: from the Dutch Zuiderzee in the west to Baltic Estonia in the east and from the Swedish Visby / Gotland in the north to the line Cologne-Erfurt-Breslau-Krakau in the south.

From this area, the Hanseatic long distance buyers developed an economic reach, which ranged from the 16th century from Portugal to Russia and from the Scandinavian countries to Italy, an area that now includes 20 European states.From the 13th to the middle of the fifteenth century, the Hanseatic League largely dominated the exchange of goods between the north-east and the north-west of Europe by covering the raw material and food supplies of the West from the East, which had been opened by the German colonization, and the east with the Western- Products. These included, for example, furs, wax, grain, fish, flax, hemp, wood and timber products such as pitch, tar and potato. In return, the Hanseatic merchants brought into these countries the industrial finished products of the West and South like cloths, metal goods, especially weapons, and spices. The Hansal surname probably comes from a long line of first traders and merchants from one of Hanseatic towns.