The Teutonic Order (German: Deutscher Orden, "German Order"; Latin: Ordo domus Sanctæ Mariæ Theutonicorum Ierosolimitanorum, "Order of the Teutonic House of Mary in Jerusalem"; Hungarian: Német Lovagrend, "German Knighthood"; Polish: Zakon Krzyżacki, "The Order of the Crossbearers" ) was a German crusading military order under Roman Catholic religious vows formed at the end of the 12th century in Acre in Palestine. They wore white surcoats with a black cross.

After Christian forces were defeated in the Middle East, the Order moved to Transylvania in 1211, but were expelled in 1225. The knights moved to northern Poland, where they created the independent Teutonic Order state.

The aggression of the Order posed a threat to the neighbouring states, especially the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1410 at the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg), a united Polish-Lithuanian army decisively defeated the Order and broke its military power. The power of the Order steadily declined until 1525 when its Grand Master, Albert of Brandenburg, converted to Lutheranism and assumed the title and rights of hereditary Duke of Prussia.

The Grand Masters continued to preside over the Order's considerable holdings in Germany until 1809, when Napoleon ordered its dissolution and the Order lost its last secular holdings. However, the order continued to exist, headed by Habsburgs through the First World War, and today operates primarily with charitable aims.

History

The Order was formed in 1190 by German merchants in Palestine to give medical aid to pilgrims at the holy places. They received Papal orders for crusades to take and hold Jerusalem for Latin Christianity. They were based at Acre.

When the mission of the Order in Palestine was nearing its end, the Teutonic Knights moved their headquarter to Venice and offered their services to Christian rulers confronted with hostile non-Christian neighbors. 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 of Salza, the new Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. Led by a brother called Theoderich, the Order defended Hungary against the neighbouring Cumans. 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. King Andrew responded by expelling them in 1225.

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. He gave the Order the Chełmno Land (Kulmerland) as a fief (1226) for the time until the conquest was over. In the same year Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II bestowed the Order a special imperial privilege to conquer Prussia (Golden Bull of

The Order did not conquer Prussia in order to incorporate it into Poland, but instead ruled it under permits issued by both the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor as a sovereign Teutonic Order state, comparable to the arrangement of the Knights Hospitallers in Rhodes and later in Malta.

The Order induced the immigration of thousands of colonists (mostly Germans and Dutch from the Holy Roman Empire and Masurians from Poland) in place of the partially exterminated local population, the survivors of whom were assimilated through Germanization and Polonization. The settlers founded numerous towns and cities on places of former Prussian settlements, and built a number of castles (Ordensburgen), in order to enforce its hold on conquered territory against attacks from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, with whom the Order was often at war during the 14th and 15th centuries. Among the cities of the Order was Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), founded in 1255 in honor of King Otakar II of Bohemia atop a destroyed Prussian settlement. Many knights from western Europe, including some from England and France, journeyed to Prussia to participate in the wars with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, whose western part (most of modern Lithuania) remained non-Christian until the end of the 14th century, much later than the rest of eastern Europe.

When the Livonian Order was absorbed into the Teutonic Order in 1237, its 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 (1242) at the hands of Prince Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod, the idea had to be dropped.

In 1337 Emperor Louis IV granted the Order the imperial privilege to conquer all Lithuania and Russia. The crusading rationale for the Order's state finally ended when Lithuania officially converted to Christianity after 1386. The grand duke of Lithuania, Jogaila, was baptised, married the Queen Jadwiga of Poland, and became King Władysław II 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.

King Albert of Sweden conceded Gotland to the Order as a pledge (similar to a fiefdom), with the understanding that they would eliminate the piratical 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 1410 at the Battle of Grunwald (also known as the

In 1454 the gentry and burghers of western Prussia rose up against the Order in the "War of the Cities" or Thirteen Years' War, at the end of which the Order recognized the Polish crown's rights over Prussia's western half (subsequently Royal Prussia) while retaining eastern Prussia under nominal Polish overlordship (Second Treaty of Thorn, 1466). Eastern Prussia (subsequently Ducal Prussia) was also lost to the Order when in 1525 its Grand Master, Albert of Brandenburg, after another unsuccessful war with Poland, converted to Lutheranism and assumed the title and rights of hereditary Duke of Prussia (as a vassal of the Polish Crown).

A new Grand Magistery was then established in Mergentheim in Württemberg, and the Grand Masters, often members of the great German families (and, after 1761, by members of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine), 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, headed by Habsburgs through the First World War, today operates primarily as a charitable organization.

Quote

Description of conditions between the Teutonic Knights and the Lithuanians, from by Guy Stair Sainty:

Those of the knights subjects who were captured by the Lithuanians could expect permanent enslavement or, if time was short and circumstances prevented them being carried off, summary execution. Indeed, the penalties awaiting the prisoners taken by the Lithuanians could be horrific, as human sacrifice and slow death by torture were not infrequent practices.

Enslavement of pagan prisoners by the knights was likewise seen as perfectly acceptable, non-Christians not being considered to have the same rights as Christians. A description by an Austrian poet, Peter Suchenwirt, quoted by Ekdahl, well illustrates these horrifying events, not so dissimilar, perhaps, to recent events in Bosnia Herzegovina: "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". One can only wonder at the astonishing use of the word "jolly"! These slaves were then used to supplement the local labor force but, usefully did not require payment and so were often preferred to the Prussian natives who needed to be paid or granted land. By enslaving the Lithuanian prisoners as much needed manual laborers, there ceased to be any incentive to convert them as, once they became Christians, they could no longer be abusesd in this fashion.

Cultural references

The Order and its relations with its neighbours (Poland, the Duchy of Masovia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) are the main subject of a novel Krzyżacy (or, in English, The Knights of the Cross) by the Polish author and Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz. The Order also appears in James A. Michener's novel Poland.

Grand Masters (Hochmeister) of the Teutonic Order, 1198–present

• Heinrich I Walpot von Bassenheim 1198–1200
• Otto von Kerpen 1200–1206
• Heinrich II von Tunna 1206–1209
• Hermann von Salza 1209–1239
• Konrad I of Thuringia 1239–1240

• Gerhard von Malberg 1241–1244
• Heinrich III von Hohenlohe 1244–1249
• Günther von Schwarzenberg 1249–1253
• Poppo von Osterna 1253–1257
• Hanno von Sangershausen 1257–1274
• Hartmann von Helbrungen 1274–1283
• Burkhard von Schwanden 1283–1290
• Konrad II von Feuchtwangen 1290–1297
• Gottfried von Hohenlohe 1297–1302
• Siegfried von Feuchtwangen 1302–1310
• Karl Bessart 1311–1324
• Werner von Orselen 1324–1330
• Lothar von Braunschweig 1331–1335
• Dietrich von Altenburg 1335–1341
• Ludolf Konig von Wattzau 1342–1345
• Heinrich IV Dusener von Arfberg 1345–1351
• Winrich von Kniprode 1351–1382
• Konrad III Zollner von Rothstein 1382–1390
• Konrad IV von Wallenrode 1391–1393
• Konrad V von Juningen 1393–1407
• Ulrich von Jungingen 1407–1410
• Heinrich von Plauen 1410–1413
• Michael Küchmeister von Sternberg 1414–1422
• Paul Belenzer von Ruszdorf 1423–1440
• Konrad VI von Erlichshausen 1441–1449
• Ludwig von Erlichshausen 1450–1467
• Heinrich VI von Reuss 1467–1470
• Heinrich VII Reffle von Richtenberg 1470–1477
• Martin Truchsetz von Wetzhausen 1477–1489
• Johann von Tieffen 1489–1497
• Friedrich of Saxony 1497–1510
• Albrecht of Brandenburg 1510–1525
• Walter von Cronberg 1527–1543
• Wolfgang Schutzbar 1543–1566
• Georg Hundt von Weckheim 1566–1572
• Heinrich VIII von Bobenhausen 1572–1590
• Maximilian of Austria Habsburg 1590–1618
• Karl I of Austria 1619–1624
• Johann Eustach von Westernach 1625–1627
• Johann Kaspar I von Stadion 1627–1641
• Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria 1641–1662
• Karl Josef of Austria 1662–1664
• Johann Kaspar II von Ampringen 1664–1684
• Ludwig Anton of Palatinate–Neuburg 1685–1694
• Ludwig Franz of Palatinate–Neuburg 1694–1732
• Klemens August of Bavaria 1732–1761
• Charles Alexander of Lorraine 1761–1780
• Maximilian Franz of Austria 1780–1801
• Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria 1801–1804
• Anton Viktor of Austria 1804–1835 (becomes hereditary to Imperial House of Austria)
• Maximilian of Austria–Este 1835–1863
• Wilhelm Franz Karl of Austria 1863–1894
• Eugen Ferdinand Pius Bernhard of Austria 1894–1923 (end of hereditary status)
• Dr. Norbert Klein 1923–1933
• Paul Heider 1933–1936
• Robert Schälzky 1936–1948
• Dr. Marian Tumler 1948–1970
• Ildefons Pauler 1970–1988
• Dr. Arnold Othmar Wieland 1988–2000
• Dr. Bruno Platter 2000–present

See also

• Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights
• Drang nach Osten
• Knights Templar
• Knights Hospitaller (Knights of Rhodes and Knights of Malta)
• Livonian Brothers of the Sword (Sword Brethren)
• Order of Dobrzyń
• History of Prussia
• Iron Cross

Coat of arms gallery

Castles of the Teutonic Order

Teutonic seals and coins

References

• Military Heritage did a feature on the Battle of Lake Peipus and the holy Knights Templar and the monastic knighthood Hospitallers (Terry Gore, Military Heritage, August 2005, Volume 7, No. 1, pp.28 to 33).

• Sainty, Guy Stair, , as accessed 19 October 2005

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