To make the Hanseatic League, knead the flour, butter, sugar, vanilla sugar, egg and nuts into a shortcrust pastry. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. Roll out the dough to the thickness of the back of a knife, cut out cookies with a glass (4 cm diameter) and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
Bake in a preheated oven at 225° for about 12 minutes until light yellow. Stir half of the confectioners’ sugar with currant syrup and 1 teaspoon of water to make a glaze; stir the other half of the sugar with water only.
Brush each cookie half with white icing and half with red icing and let dry.