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Teutonic Knights

(Redirected from Teutonic Orders)
Teutonic Knights Castle in Malbork (Marienburg)
Teutonic Knights Castle in Malbork (Marienburg)

The Teutonic Order (German: Deutscher Orden, Latin: Ordo domus Sanctæ Mariæ Theutonicorum ) was a crusading order of knights under Roman Catholic religious vows which was formed at the end of the 12th century in Palestine to give medical aid to pilgrims to the holy places. They received Papal orders for crusades to take and hold Jerusalem for 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. Despite the fact that their mission of conquering the Holy Land was ended, they wanted to introduce the idea of religious crusades to Eastern Europe, on the border with pagan nations. The Knights offered their services to the local Christian rulers posing as religiously motivated mercenaries. Nevertheless, they hoped that using their influence in the Holy Roman Empire could help them become territorial proprietors of the newly conquered lands.

In 1211, Andrew II of Hungary accepted their services. They were granted 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. The latter's vassals included the family of Hermann of Salza, the new master of the Teutonic Order. Led by a brother called Theoderich, they defended the Kingdom of Hungary from the neighbouring Cumans. In 1224 they petitioned Pope Honorius III to be placed directly under the authority of the Papal See, rather than the Kingdom of Hungary. King Andrew responded by expelling them in 1225.

At that time Konrad I Mazowiecki, duke of Mazovia in what is now east-central Poland, appealed to the Knights to defend his province and conquer the native tribes in Prussia, giving it the Chelmno Land as a fief (1226) for the time until the conquest was over. Soon the Teutonic knights annexed part of the smaller order of Bracia Dobrzynscy and their Dobrzyn Land . The Order's conquest of Prussia was accomplished with great bloodshed over more than 50 years, during which the native Old Prussians were subjugated and forced to adopt Christianity. Eventually the Order transferred its headquarters to a huge brick castle it built at Malbork (Marienburg) on the Nogat River south of Gdansk (Danzig). The Order did not surrender Prussia to Poland; instead it was converted into Teutonic Order state, which in principle was against the rules of a Chivalric Order.

The Order instigated the immigration of many thousands of colonists from Germany and the Netherlands, founded numerous towns and cities, and built massive castles, called Ordensburgen in German, to defend the settlements against attacks from Lithuania and Poland, with which the Order was at war many times during the 14th and 15th centuries. Among cities founded by the Teutonic Order was Königsberg (1255), later capital of the German province of East Prussia (Ostpreussen) and, after World War II, the Soviet Russian city of Kaliningrad. Many knights from western Europe, including some from England and France, journeyed to Prussia to participate in punitive raids against Lithuania, which remained non-Christian ("heathen") until the end of the 14th century, much later than the rest of eastern Europe.

The crusading rationale for the existence of the Teutonic state finally ended when Lithuania officially converted to Christianity after 1386. The grand duke of Lithuania, Jogaila, was baptised and then married the queen of Poland Jadwiga, hence becoming as Ladislaus II the king of Poland. This initiated an alliance between the two countries and created a formidable opponent for the Teutonic Knights.

But at first King Albert of Sweden conceded Gotlandia to the allied Teutonic Order as a pledge, similar a fiefdom. He expected that the Teutonic Knights will challenge the Victual Brothers on this island to wipe them out and destroy the fortified sanctuary of them. An invasion army under Konrad of Jungingen , the Grand Master of the Order, conquered the island in 1398, destroyed Visby and drove the Victual Brothers out of Gotland.

In 1410 at the Battle of Grunwald a combined Polish-Lithuanian army completely destroyed the Order's army and hence broke its military power. The Grand Master of the Order and most of its higher dignitaries fell on the battlefield. Following the battle the capital of the Order, Malbork, was besieged by the Polish-Lithuanian army but managed to hold out. Despite the defeat on the battlefield, when peace was made the Order managed to keep essentially all of its territories.

In 1454 gentry and the burghers of western Prussia rose up against the Order in the "War of the Cities" or Thirteen Year War, at the end of which the Order recognized Polish crown 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, converted to Lutheranism and assumed the rank of hereditary Duke of Prussia.

The new Grand Magistery was then established in Württemberg and members of the Habsburg family continued as grand masters over the Order's considerable holdings in Germany until 1809, when the Order lost its last secular holdings. The order continued to exist, headed by Habsburgs through the First World War, and today operates primarily as a charitable organization.

The Order and its relations with its neighbours (Poland, the Duchy of Masovia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) are the main motive in a novel by the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, called Krzyzacy (or, in English, The Teutonic Knights).

The Teutons were well known for their ability to hold out during a siege.

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

See also

External links

  • The order's homepage http://www.deutscher-orden.at
  • A description of the Teutonic Knights http://www.chivalricorders.org/vatican/teutonic.htm


Last updated: 02-22-2005 02:38:43