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The Teutonic Knights or Teutonic Order (Ordo domus Sanctæ Mariæ Theutonicorum Ierosolimitanorum, "Order of the Teutonic House of Mary in Jerusalem") 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 in the Middle East, the Order moved to Transylvania in 1211 to help defend Hungary 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. Once arrived to 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 (Tannenberg). 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 (see Iron Cross). 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. It 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 (1209-1239) the Order changed from being a hospice brotherhood for pilgrims to primarily a military order. The Teutonic Knights were based at Acre. Other fortresses of the Order in the Middle East were Montfort (Starkenberg) 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 (especially in present-day Germany and Italy), Greece, and Palestine. Emperor Frederick II elevated his close friend Hermann von Salza to the status of Reichsfürst, or "Prince of the Empire", enabling the Grand Master to negotiate with other senior princes 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 Templars 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, 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 the Knights petitioned Pope Honorius III to be placed directly under the authority of the Papal See, rather than that 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 Chełmno Land (Culmerland) as a base for their campaign. This being a time of widespread crusading fervor throughout Western Europe, Hermann von Salza considered Prussia a good training ground for his knights for the wars against the Muslims in Outremer. Christianized Prussians received the same rights as the newcomer settlers from the Empire. Conversion to Christianity was initially largely nominal and sometimes did not entail more than baptism. The Order ruled Prussia under charters 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. To make up for losses from the plague and to replace the partially exterminated native population, the Order encouraged the immigration of colonists from the Holy Roman Empire (mostly Germans, Flemish, and Dutch) and from Masovia (Masovians, the later Masurians). 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. The Order itself built a number of castles (Ordensburgen) from which it could defeat uprisings of Old Prussians, as well as continue its attacks on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, with which 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 (Olsztyn), Elbing (Elbląg), and Memel (Klaipėda). When the Livonian Order was absorbed into the Teutonic Order in 1237, its nominal territorial rule extended over Prussia, Livonia, Semigalia, and Estonia. Its 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, this plan had to be abandoned. 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 (most of modern 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 them campaigned against pagans to obtain remission for their sins, while others fought to gain military experience. Warfare between the Order and the 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 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 Władysław I the Elbow-high of Poland, the Pomeranian nobles requested help from the Margrave of Brandenburg who thus occupied in 1308 all of Pomerelia except for the citadel of Danzig (Gdańsk). Because Władysław 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 Władysław 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. Control of Pomerelia allowed the Order to connect their monastic state with the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. Crusading reinforcements and supplies were able to travel from the Imperial territory of Western Pomerania through Pomerelia to Prussia, while Poland's access to the Baltic Sea was blocked. While Poland had mostly been an ally of the knights against the pagan Prussians and Lithuanians, the capture of Pomerelia turned the kingdom into a determined enemy of the Order. The Treaty of Kalisz of 1343 ended open war between the Teutonic Knights and Poland. The Knights relinquished Kuyavia and Dobrzyń 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 (1351-1382), the Order reached the peak of its international prestige and hosted numerous foreign crusaders and nobility. King Albert of Sweden ceded Gotland to the Order as a pledge (similar to a fiefdom), with the understanding that they would eliminate the pirating Victual Brothers from this strategic island base in the Baltic Sea. 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 Władysław II, King of Poland. This created a personal union between the two countries and created a potentially formidable opponent for the Teutonic Knights. The Order initially managed to play Jogaila and his cousin Vytautas against each other, but this strategy failed when Vytautas began to suspect that the Order was planning to annex parts of his territory. The baptism of Władysław II began the official conversion of Lithuania to Christianity. Although the crusading rationale for the Order's state had ended when 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 in 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 (also known as the Battle of Tannenberg), a combined Polish-Lithuanian army, led by Władysław II Jagiełło 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 (50 out of 60). The Polish-Lithuanian army then besieged the capital of the Order, Marienburg (Malbork) castle, but was unable to take it owing to the resistance of Heinrich von Plauen. When the First Peace of Toruń was signed in 1411, the Order managed to retain essentially all of its territories, although the Knights' reputation as invincible warriers was irreparably damaged. While Poland and Lithuania were growing in power, that of the Teutonic Knights dwindled through infighting. They were forced to impose high taxes in order to pay an indemnity equivalent to £850,000, but did not give the cities sufficient requested representation in the administration of their state. The authoritarian and reforming Hochmeister Heinrich von Plauen was forced from power and replaced by Michael Küchmeister von Sternberg, but the new Grand Master 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 from 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 ravaged by the Hussites during the Hussite Wars. Some Teutonic Knights were sent to battle the invaders, but were defeated by the Bohemian infantry. The Livonian territory was then partitioned by neighboring powers during the Livonian War; in 1561 the Livonian Master Gotthard Kettler secularized the southern Livonian possessions of the Order to create the Duchy of Courland, also a vassal of Poland. After 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-tiered administrative system: holdings were combined into commanderies which were administered by a commander (Komtur). Several commanderies were combined to form a bailiwick headed by a Landkomtur. All of the Teutonic Knights' possessions were subordinate to the Hochmeister whose seat was in Bad Mergentheim. Altogether there were twelve German bailiwicks: Thuringia, Alden Biesen (in present-day Belgium), Hesse, Saxony, Westphalia, Franconia, Koblenz, Alsace-Burgundy, An der Etsch und im Gebirge (Tyrol), Utrecht, Lorraine, and Austria. Outside of German areas were the bailiwicks of Sicily, Apulia, Lombardy, Bohemia, "Romania" (Greece), and Armenia-Cyprus. The Order gradually lost control of these holdings until, by 1810, only the bailiwicks in Tyrol and Austria remained. Following the abdication of Albert of Prussia, Walter von Cronberg became Deutschmeister in 1527 and Hochmeister in 1530. Emperor Charles V combined the two positions in 1531, creating the title Hoch- und Deutschmeister and elevating the Order's Grand Master to the status of Prince of the Empire. The Teutonic Knights now were tri-denominational, and there were Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed bailiwicks. The Hochmeisters, often members of the great German families (and, after 1761, members of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine), 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 its remaining secular holdings to Napoleon's vassals and allies. Contemporary Teutonic Order The Order continued to exist in Austria. It was only in 1834 that it was again officially called the Deutscher Ritterorden ("German Knightly Order"), although most of its possessions were worldly by then. Beginning in 1804 it was headed by members of the Habsburg dynasty until the 1923 resignation of the Grand Master, Archduke Eugen of Austria. In 1929 the Teutonic Knights were converted to a purely spiritual religious order and were renamed Deutscher Orden ("German Order"). After Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany, the Teutonic Order was abolished throughout the Großdeutsches Reich from 1938-1945, although the Nazis used imagery of the medieval Teutonic Knights for propaganda purposes. The Order survived in Italy, however, and was reconstituted in Germany and Austria in 1945. By the end of the 1990s, the Order had developed into a charitable organization and incorporated numerous clinics. It sponsors excavation and tourism projects in Israel and the Palestinian territories. In 2000 the German chapter of the Teutonic Order declared insolvency, and its upper management was dismissed. A 2002-2003 investigation by a special committee of the Bavarian parliament was inconclusive. The Order currently consists of approximately 1,000 members, including 100 priests, 200 nuns, and 700 associates. While the priests are organized into five provinces (Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and predominantly provide spiritual guidance, the nuns primarily care for the ill and the aged. Associates are active in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Italy. Many of the priests care for German-speaking communities outside of Germany and Austria, especially in Italy and Slovenia; in this sense the Teutonic Order has returned to its 12th century roots — the spiritual and physical care of Germans in foreign lands. The current General Abbot of the Order, who also holds the title of Hochmeister or Grand Master, is Bruno Platter. The current seat of the Grand Master is the Deutschordenskirche in Vienna. Near the Stephansdom in the Austrian capital is the Central Archive of the Teutonic Order and a museum dedicated to the knights. Since 1996 there has also been a museum dedicated to the Teutonic Knights at their former castle in Bad Mergentheim in Germany, which was the seat of the Grand Master from 1525-1809. Names in other languages See also Coat of arms gallery Image:Teutonic order COA drawing.svg Image:Den tyske ordens skjold.jpg Image:Crux Ordis Teutonicorum.svg Seals and coins Image:Seal-grandmaster-teutonic order 1-640x640.jpg|Seal of the Hochmeister Image:Teutonic Order Coin B ubt.jpeg|Reconstructed coin Image:Teutonic Order Coin A ubt.jpeg|Reconstructed coin | |||||||
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