IV.

The Teutonic Knights of Saint Mary’s Hospital at Jerusalem

The Teutonic Knights were the last of the three great military religious orders to be founded during the Crusades. The order was founded at Acre in Palestine in 1190. In that year the Muslims mounted a siege of the city, and the new order of Teutonic Knights was given a hospital to care for sick and wounded Crusaders. In 1198 the Teutonic Knights were changed from a purely charitable order to a military one to help fight the Turks in the Holy Land. Membership in the Teutonic Knights was limited to German noblemen. In all other respects, though, the order was similar to the Hospitalers and Templars. The Teutonic Knights used the same monastic rule as the Templars, and their organization was much the same as the Templars and Hospitalers. They received official recognition from Pope Innocent III in 1199 and were granted the use of a white tunic with a black cross.

The Teutonic Knights’ early growth was slow since it competed for members and contributions with the already well-established Templars and Hospitalers. In 1210 Hermann von Salza assumed the leadership of the Knights, and under his vigorous administration they began to expand more quickly. The Knights also moved their primary field of operations from Palestine to eastern Europe. At first, the king of Hungary invited the order to participate in a crusade against the Cumans, a pagan Turkic tribe that threatened the kingdom's southeastern borderlands. The order soon took up permanent residence in the area.

In 1226 the Knights demanded and received Prussia (most of modern northern Poland) as a fief from Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, on the condition that they convert its Slavic natives to Christianity. In 1234 Pope Gregory IX granted the Knights control over any other territory that they might conquer from the Slavs. The Teutonic Knights soon built a series of imposing castles to defend their new territory, and from these fortresses they frequently waged war against the Slavs. During the next 50 years, the Teutonic Knights gradually gained control over Prussia. In making these conquests, they worked closely with the recently established Livonian Order, which became an integral part of the Teutonic Knights in 1237. Most of the natives were forced to convert to Christianity, driven out of Prussia, or killed. The Knights then encouraged German settlement in the now underpopulated region, and as a result Prussia eventually became predominantly German.

By 1300 the Teutonic Knights had become the most formidable power in central and eastern Europe. The order controlled a territory that stretched from Livonia (most of modern Latvia and Estonia) through Prussia and into parts of Germany. The Knights maintained their dominance in the region by waging as many as eight military campaigns each year. In addition, after the order was released from its vow of poverty by the pope in 1263, it became a powerful trading organization, dominating grain trade in the region, and protecting and supporting the cities of the German Hanseatic League. By the end of the 14th century, though, the Knights’ role was changing quickly. After 1386 it could no longer claim that its wars were to win converts; in that year the ruler of Lithuania married the Queen of Poland, and Lithuania became the last state in eastern Europe to convert to Christianity. The alliance between Lithuania and Poland, moreover, strengthened the Slavs’ position in the region, and a long war between the Teutonic Knights and Poland broke out. In 1409 the King of Poland invited all enemies of the Teutonic Knights to participate in a campaign against the order. On July 15, 1410, the armies of Poland together with recruits of Czechs, Hungarians, Tartars, Lithuanians, and Cossacks defeated the order at Tannenberg in Prussia.

The Teutonic Knights survived in Prussia and the Baltic in the later Middle Ages, but their hold over their territories grew weaker. As the order’s military power declined, the number of recruits shrank. To maintain their control, the Knights came to rely on mercenaries. This, in turn, meant higher taxes in its territories, which caused resentment. As the Knights’ position weakened, Poland seized West Prussia from the order in 1466. In 1525 the order’s grand master Albrecht of Hohenzollern adopted Lutheranism, dissolved the order in the remaining Prussian territories, and established a secular dukedom. Throughout the 16th century, the order’s presence in eastern Europe continued to decline as Russia, Poland, and Sweden chipped away at its Baltic possessions. By 1591 the Knights had been expelled from Livonia, their last remaining territory in the region.

The order lived on as a small military force and moved its base of operations to southern Germany and Austria, where in 1683 it fought against the Ottomans at Vienna. By 1697 its numbers had declined precipitously, and the fighting force was disbanded. The order now became a purely religious institution. In 1809 Napoleon I dissolved the Knights, but a revival of the order began in Austria after 1834. Throughout the 19th century the Teutonic Knights were solely a charitable institution, but in 1929, their religious rule was revived. The order continued to function as a monastic order of the Roman Catholic Church except for a brief period during World War II (1939-1945). The Knights’ headquarters are in Vienna, and they maintain nursing facilities at their various posts in Austria, Germany, and Italy.

Although the order’s 20th-century presence is modest, its historical importance is large. For several centuries the Knights waged a Crusade in eastern Europe and converted the Slavic peoples to Christianity. In that process they also supported German settlement in the region. The legacy of these historical events is twofold. On the one hand, the Teutonic Knights’ influence persists indirectly in the strong Roman Catholicism of Poland and other eastern European states. On the other, the order’s heritage has continued to endure in the ethnic tensions between German and Slavic peoples in that region.

During the 1930s and 1940s, National Socialists (Nazis) in Germany saw in the activities of the Teutonic Knights a precedent for their own conquest of eastern Europe and their attempt to resettle those lands with German-speaking peoples. During the Third Reich the Nazis restored the Knights’ foremost castles as monuments to the German past.