In 1995 Supremo was given the opportunity to acquire and set up its offices in the ‘Oosterlingenhuis’ in Brugge 'Oosterlingenhuis' (Oriental’s House) was built in 1485 for the German Hanse as their headquarters. It was a gift from the Brugge’s city council, who sought in this gesture the recently achieved mutual understanding and to tie the German merchants to Brugge. The German Hanse was originally an association designed to promote merchants ‘interests’. Later it developed into an union of towns and cities, and one of the towns which played an important part in the creation and further growth of this Hanse was Lubeck, which soon took on the leadership of the organisation. England and The Netherlands were attractive destinations where lucrative business awaited, and London and Brugge soon became very important points on the map for these German traders, some of whom began to settle there permanently. In Flanders the Hanseatics were usually known as the Orientals because they came from the east, and moreover the area where most of them originated was the Baltic Sea, called in Dutch the ‘Oostzee’. The impressive appearance of the Oriental’s House could not prevent the presence of German merchants in the town from dwindling dramatically, as Brugge lost its harbour importance to Antwerpen.
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