Albrecht Giese

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Albrecht Giese (IV.) (February 10, 1524 – August 1, 1580) was a councilman and diplomat of the city of Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland).

Giese was born in Danzig, a member of the Hanseatic League, to the influential and wealthy merchant Patrician family Giese. Relatives of him were the merchant Georg Giese and the bishop Tiedemann Giese.

Albrecht studied at the Universities of Greifswald , Wittenberg and Heidelberg. As was the custom of the time for Hanseatic merchants, he toured Europe for several years to learn different languages after his formal studies, as was necessary for a long-distance trader. In the meantime, Giese had married in Danzig and returned there from his travels in 1564 and became a councilman. Over the next six years he took part as a Danzig delegate at several Hanseatic League meetings in Lübeck.

In the 1560s, Polish king Sigismund II Augustus instituted a Maritime Commission to oversee the creation of a royal fleet which would have its main base at Danzig. Sigismund sought to have the old statutes of the cities of Danzig and Elbing (Elbląg) revoked and replaced by his own Statua Karnkowiana, which considerably limited the authority of the city council. The authorities of Danzig considered these initiatives a curtailing of their privileges, as the members of the commission as well as the privateers forming the nucleus of this Navy were exempt from the city's jurisdiction even in criminal cases.

Open conflict between the Polish king and the city council broke out when the city council was arrested and sentenced to death. Negotiations between the city and the king took place in 1568/69, initially at Piotrków Trybunalski. Giese was a member of the delegation, led by the mayor of the city, Johann Brandes. Despite being subjected to severe pressure and incarceration for a year at Cracow, the delegation refused to submit to the king's terms and was eventually released in 1570 against a ransom of 100,000 guilders.

In 1579, Giese was named royal burgrave of Danzig by the Polish king; a position that entailed the supervision of the judiciaries of the city.