The merchants from their respective "Drittel" would then each choose two "Ältermänner" and six members of the Eighteen Men's Council ("Achtzehnmännerrat") to administer the "Kontor" for a set period of time. In 1356, during a Hanseatic meeting in preparation of the first "Tagfahrt", the league confirmed this statute. The league in general gradually adopted and institutionalized the division into "Drittel" (see table). The "Tagfahrt" or "Hansetag" was the only central institution of the Hanseatic League. However, with the division into "Drittel", the members of the respective subdivisions frequently held a "Dritteltage" (""Drittel" meeting") to work out common positions which could then be presented at a "Tagfahrt". On a more local level, league members also met, and while such regional meetings were never formalized into a Hanseatic institution, they gradually gained importance in the process of preparing and implementing "Tagfahrt" decisions. From 1554, the division into "Drittel" was modified to reduce the circles' heterogeneity, to enhance the collaboration of the members on a local level and thus to make the league's decision-making process more efficient. The number of circles rose to four, so they were called "Quartiere" (quarters):  This division was however not adopted by the "Kontore", who, for their purposes (like "Ältermänner" elections), grouped the league members in different ways (e.g., the division adopted by the Stahlhof in London in 1554 grouped the league members into "Dritteln", whereby Lübeck merchants represented the Wendish, Pomeranian Saxon and several Westphalian towns, Cologne merchants represented the Cleves, Mark, Berg and Dutch towns, while Danzig merchants represented the Prussian and Livonian towns). The names of the Quarters have been abbreviated in the following table:  Kontor: The Kontore were foreign trading posts of the League, not cities that were Hanseatic members, and are set apart in a separate table below. The remaining column headings are as follows:        Despite its collapse, several cities still maintained the link to the Hanseatic League. Dutch cities including Groningen, Deventer, Kampen, Zutphen and Zwolle, and a number of German cities including Bremen, Demmin, Greifswald, Hamburg, Lübeck, Lüneburg, Rostock, Stade, Stralsund and Wismar still call themselves "Hanse" cities (their car license plates are prefixed "H", e.g. –"HB"– for "Hansestadt Bremen").