Encyclopedia
The
Teutonic Knights or
Teutonic Order is a
German Roman Catholic religious order formed at the end of the 12th century in
Acre in
Palestine. During the
Middle Ages they were a
crusading military order and wore white surcoats with a black cross.
The order played an important role in the
Middle East controlling the port tolls of
Acre. After Christian forces were defeated, the order moved to
Transylvania in 1211 to help defend against the
Cumans. They were expelled in 1225 after allegedly attempting to place themselves under papal instead of Hungarian sovereignty.
Following the Golden Bull of Rimini,
Grand Master Hermann von Salza and Duke
Konrad I of Masovia made a joint invasion of
Prussia in 1226 to Christianize the Baltic
Old Prussians. The knights were then accused of cheating Polish rule and creating an independent
monastic state. After basing itself in Prussia, the order became involved in many campaigns against its neighbours, the Kingdom of Poland, the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the
Novgorod Republic. As well as their feudal levies the order had a strong urban economy, hired many mercenaries, and became a naval power in the
Baltic Sea.
In 1410, a Polish-Lithuanian army decisively defeated the order and broke its military power at the
Battle of Grunwald . The order steadily declined until 1525 when Grand Master
Albert of Brandenburg resigned and converted to
Lutheranism to become
Duke of Prussia. The Grand Masters continued to preside over the order's considerable holdings in Germany until 1809, when
Napoleon Bonaparte ordered its dissolution and the order lost its last secular holdings. The order continued to exist, headed by
Habsburgs through
World War I, and today operates primarily with charitable aims in Central Europe.
The knights sometimes used a cross pattée as their
coat of arms; this image was later used for military decoration and insignia by the
Kingdom of Prussia and
Germany .
History
Foundation
The order was formed out of
knights and
priests in 1190 by merchants of
Bremen and
Lübeck for the establishment of a hospital for the care of
German pilgrims during the Siege of Acre of the
Third Crusade. In 1198 the head of the order became known as the
Hochmeister or Grand Master. They received
Papal orders for crusades to take and hold
Jerusalem for
Latin Christianity and defend the
Holy Land against the
Muslim Saracens. During the rule of Grand Master
Hermann von Salza the order changed from being a hospice brotherhood for pilgrims to primarily a military order.
They were based at
Acre. Other fortresses of the order in the Middle East were Montfort northeast of Acre, which served to defend the route between Jerusalem and the
Mediterannean Sea, and a castle near Tarsus in
Armenia Minor. The order received donations of land in the
Holy Roman Empire ,
Greece, and
Palestine.
Emperor Frederick II granted his close friend Hermann von Salza the additional title of
Reichsfürst, or "Prince of the Empire", enabling the Grand Master to negotiate with nobility as an equal. During Frederick's coronation as King of Jerusalem in 1225, Teutonic Knights served as his escort in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre; Salza read the emperor's proclamation in both
French and
German. However, the Teutonic Knights were never as influential in
Outremer as the older
Knights Templar and
Hospitallers.
In 1211, Andrew II of
Hungary accepted their services and granted them the district of
Burzenland in
Transylvania. Andrew had been involved in negotiations for the marriage of his daughter with the son of Hermann, the Landgrave of
Thuringia, whose vassals included the family of Hermann von Salza. Led by a brother called Theoderich, the order defended Hungary against the neighbouring
Cumans and settled colonists known as the Transylvanian Saxons among their wooden fortresses. In 1224 they petitioned
Pope Honorius III to be placed directly under the authority of the
Papal See, rather than of the King of Hungary. Angered and alarmed at their growing power, Andrew responded by expelling them in 1225, although he allowed the Transylvanian Saxons to remain.
In Prussia
In 1226
Konrad I, Duke of
Masovia in west-central
Poland, appealed to the knights to defend his borders and subdue the pagan Baltic
Prussians, allowing the Teutonic Knights use of Culmerland as a base for their campaign. Hermann von Salza felt Prussia would be a good training ground for his knights for the wars against the
Muslims in Outremer. With the Golden Bull of Rimini, Emperor Frederick II bestowed on the order a special imperial privilege for the possession of Prussia, including Culmerland, with nominal papal sovereignty. Soon the Teutonic Knights assimilated the smaller
Order of Dobrzyn, which had been established earlier by Konrad.
The conquest of Prussia was accomplished with great bloodshed over more than 50 years, during which native Prussians who remained unbaptised were subjugated, killed, or exiled. Fighting between the knights and the Prussians was ferocious; chronicles of the order state the Prussians would "roast captured brethren alive in their armour, like chestnuts, before the shrine of a local god". Christianized Prussians received the same rights as the newcomer settlers from the Empire. Conversion to Christianity was largely nominal and sometimes did not entail more than
baptism.
The order ruled Prussia under permits issued by the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor as a sovereign
monastic state, comparable to the arrangement of the
Knights Hospitallers in
Rhodes and later in
Malta. Previous documents in 1224 had put the inhabitants of "Terra Prussia"' as
Reichsfreie, or under authority of only the emperor and the empire.
In order to make up for losses from plague and to replace the partially exterminated native population, the order encouraged the immigration of thousands of
colonists from the
Holy Roman Empire and from Masovia . The colonists included nobles, burghers, and peasants, and the surviving Old Prussians were gradually assimilated through Germanization. The settlers founded numerous towns and cities on former Prussian settlements. They also built a number of castles from which the order could defeat uprisings of Old Prussians, as well as continue its attacks on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, with whom the order was often at war during the 14th and 15th centuries. Major towns founded by the order included
Königsberg, founded in 1255 in honor of King Otakar II of
Bohemia on the site of a destroyed Prussian settlement,
Allenstein,
Elbing, and
Memel.
When the
Livonian Order merged with the Teutonic Order in 1237, its nominal territorial rule extended over Prussia,
Livonia, Semigalia, and
Estonia. Their next aim was to convert
Orthodox Russia to
Roman Catholicism, but after the knights suffered a disastrous defeat in the
Battle on Lake Peipus at the hands of Prince
Alexander Nevsky of
Novgorod, the idea had to be dropped.
Against Lithuania
The Teutonic Knights began to direct their campaigns against pagan Lithuania, especially after the fall of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem at
Acre in 1291; the knights moved their headquarters to
Venice, from which they planned the recovery of Outremer. Because medieval western Lithuania remained non-Christian until the end of the 14th century, much later than the rest of eastern Europe, many knights from western European countries such as
England and
France journeyed to Prussia to participate in the seasonal campaigns against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Some of these knights and nobles campaigned against pagans to obtain remission for their sins, while others fought to gain military experience.
Warfare between the Teutonic Knights and the pagan Lithuanians was especially brutal. Non-Christians were seen as lacking rights possessed by Christians. Because enslavement of non-Christians was seen as acceptable at the time and the subdued native Prussians demanded land or payment, the Teutonic Knights often used captured pagan Lithuanians for forced labor. The contemporary
Austrian poet Peter Suchenwirt described treatment he witnessed of pagans by the knights:
"Women and children were taken captive; What a jolly medley could be seen: Many a woman could be seen, Two children tied to her body, One behind and one in front; On a horse without spurs Barefoot had they ridden here; The heathens were made to suffer: Many were captured and in every case, Were their hands tied together They were led off, all tied up - Just like hunting dogs".
Against Poland
A dispute over the succession of the Duchy of Pomerelia, embroiled the order in further conflict in the beginning of the 14th century. Opposed to King
Wladyslaw I the Elbow-high of Poland, the Pomeranian nobles requested help from the Margraves of
Brandenburg who thus occupied in 1308 all of Pomerelia except for the citadel of Danzig . Because Wladyslaw was unable to come to the defense of Danzig, the Teutonic Knights were called upon to liberate the region from the control of Brandenburg. The knights, under Prussian Landmeister Heinrich von Plötzke, evicted the Brandenburgers from Danzig in September 1308, but discontent grew in the city when the order did not quickly relinquish control to Poland. The following month the knights suppressed an uprising with great bloodshed, especially of the German merchants in the city. Heinrich von Plötzke presented Wladyslaw with a bill for 10,000 marks of silver for the order's help, but the Polish king was only willing to offer 300 marks. On 13 September 1309 the order purchased from Brandenburg for 10,000 marks claims to the castles of Danzig, Schwetz , and Dirschau , and their hinterlands.capture of Danzig marked a new phase in the history of the Teutonic Knights. The persecution and abolition of the powerful
Knights Templar beginning in 1307 worried the Teutonic Knights, but control of Pomerelia allowed them to move their headquarters in 1309 from Venice to Marienburg on the
Nogat River, outside of the reach of secular powers. The position of Prussian Landmeister was merged with that of the Grand Master. The Pope began investigating into misconduct by the knights, although the order was defended by able lawyers and jurists. Along with the campaigns against the Lithuanians, the knights faced vengeful Poland and legal threats from the Papacy.Treaty of Kalisz of 1343 ended open war between the Teutonic Knights and Poland. The Knights relinquished Kuyavia and Dobrzyn Land to Poland, but retained
Culmerland and Pomerelia.
Height of power
In 1337 Emperor
Louis IV allegedly granted the order the imperial privilege to conquer all Lithuania and Russia. During the reign of Grand Master
Winrich von Kniprode , the order reached the peak of its international prestige and hosted numerous foreign crusaders and nobility.
King
Albert of
Sweden conceded
Gotland to the order as a pledge , with the understanding that they would eliminate the pirating
Victual Brothers from their strategic island base. An invasion force under Grand Master Konrad von Jungingen conquered the island in 1398, destroyed
Visby, and drove the Victual Brothers out of Gotland and the
Baltic Sea.
In 1386 Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania was
baptised into
Roman Catholic Christianity and married Queen
Jadwiga of Poland, thus becoming
Wladyslaw II, King of Poland. This initiated an alliance between the two countries and created a potentially formidable opponent for the Teutonic Knights. The order managed to play Jogaila and his cousin
Vytautas against each other, but this strategy failed as Vytautas began to suspect the order was planning to annex parts of his territory.
The baptism of Wladyslaw II began the official conversion of Lithuania to Christianity. Although the crusading rationale for the order's state had ended as Prussia and Lithuania had become officially Christian, the order's feuds and wars with Lithuania and Poland continued. The Lizard Union was created in 1397 by Polish nobles within Culmerland to undermine the order's rule.
In 1407 the Teutonic Order had reached its greatest territorial extent and included the lands of
Prussia, Pomerelia,
Samogitia,
Courland,
Livonia,
Estonia,
Gotland,
Dagö,
Ösel, and the Neumark, pawned by Brandenburg in 1402.
Decline
In 1410 at the
Battle of Grunwald , a united Polish-Lithuanian army, led by
Wladyslaw II Jagiello and
Vytautas, decisively defeated the order in the
Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War. Grand Master
Ulrich von Jungingen and most of the order's higher dignitaries fell on the battlefield . The Polish-Lithuanian army then besieged the capital of the order, Marienburg castle, but was unable to take it owing to the resistance of Heinrich von Plauen. When the First Peace of Torun was signed in 1411, the order managed to retain essentially all of its territories, although the knights' prestige was irreparably damaged.
While Poland and Lithuania were growing in power, the Teutonic Knights dwindled through infighting. The Teutonic Knights were forced to put in place high taxation to pay an indemnity equivalent to £850,000, but did not give the cities sufficient requested representation. The authoritarian and reforming Hochmeister Heinrich von Plauen was forced from power and replaced with Michael Küchmeister von Sternberg, although the new Hochmeister was unable to revive the order's fortunes; after the Gollub War the knights lost some small border regions and renounced all claims to
Samogitia in the 1422 Treaty of Melno.
Austrian and Bavarian knights feuded with those of the Rhineland, who likewise bickered with
Low German-speaking
Saxons, from whose ranks the Hochmeister was usually chosen. The western Prussian lands of the Vistula River Valley were even ravaged by the Hussites during the
Hussite Wars. Some Teutonic Knights were sent to battle the rebels, but were almost invariably defeated by the
Bohemian infantry.
In 1454 the Prussian Confederation consisting of the gentry and burghers of western Prussia rose up against the order, beginning the Thirteen Years' War. Much of Prussia was devastated in the war, during the course of which the order returned Neumark to Brandenburg in 1455. In the Second Peace of Torun at war's end, the defeated order recognized the
Polish crown's rights over western Prussia while retaining eastern Prussia under nominal Polish overlordship. Because Marienburg was lost to the order, their base was moved to Königsberg in Sambia.
Eastern Prussia was also lost to the order when Hochmeister
Albert of Prussia, after another unsuccessful war with Poland, converted to
Lutheranism in 1525, secularized the order's remaining Prussian territories, and assumed from King
Sigismund I the Old of Poland the hereditary rights to
Ducal Prussia as a vassal of the Polish Crown in the
Prussian Homage. Ducal Prussia was both the first Protestant state and a fief of Catholic Poland.
Although they had lost control of all of their Prussian lands, the Teutonic Order retained its territories within the
Holy Roman Empire and
Livonia, although the Livonian branch retained considerable autonomy. Many of the Imperial possessions were ruined in the Peasants' War from 1524-1525, and subsequently confiscated by Protestant territorial princes.r the loss of Prussia in 1525, the Teutonic Knights concentrated on their possessions in the Holy Roman Empire. Since they held no contiguous territory, they developed a three tier administration management system: A rule district was combined into a commandery and was subordinated to a commander . Several commanderies were combined to form a
bailiwick headed by a
landkomtur. After the
Protestant Reformation, the Teutonic Knights were tridenominational and there were Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed bailiwicks. All of the Teutonic Knights' possessions were subordinate to the Hochmeister whose seat was in
Bad Mergentheim. Altogether there were twelve German bailiwicks including
Thuringia, Alden Biesen ,
Hesse,
Saxony, Westphalia,
Franconia,
Koblenz,
Alsace-
Burgundy,
An der Etsch und im Gebirge , Utrecht, Lorraine, and
Austria. Outside of German areas were the bailiwicks of
Sicily,
Apulia,
Lombardy,
Bohemia, "
Romania" , and
Armenia-
Cyprus. The order gradually lost control of these holdings until, by 1810, only the bailiwicks in Tyrol and Austria remained.
With the abdication of Albert of Prussia,
Walter von Cronberg became the Deutschmeister in 1527 and the Hochmeister in 1530. Emperor
Charles V combined the two positions in 1531, creating the title
Hoch- und Deutschmeister and granting the order's Grand Master the honor of being a Prince of the Empire. A new Grand Magistery was established in
Mergentheim in
Württemberg, which was attacked during the Peasants' War. The order also helped Charles V against the Schmalkaldic League. After the
Peace of Augsburg in 1555, membership in the order was open to Protestants, although the majority of brothers remained Catholic.Hochmeisters, often members of the great German families , continued to preside over the order's considerable holdings in Germany. Teutonic Knights from Germany, Austria, and
Bohemia were used as battlefield commanders leading mercenaries for the
Habsburg Monarchy during the Ottoman wars in Europe. The military history of the Teutonic Knights ended in 1809, when
Napoleon I of France ordered their dissolution and the order lost their remaining secular holdings to Napoleon's allies.
Contemporary Teutonic Order
The order contin
