Richard chose a couple of cities in Poland to visit for his birthday. Gdansk was the Hanseatic port city of Danzig starting in 1358. The Hanseatic League grew from Lübeck and a few other North German towns in the late 12th century, and we have visited quite a few of the towns. The towns always maintain their charm and the medieval riches of a port town, and the old Danzig was no exception.
Danzig was part of the territory controlled by the Teutonic Knights, who were a medieval Catholic military-religious order, formally founded around 1190–1198 during the Third Crusade. They began by running a hospital for German-speaking crusaders and pilgrims in Acre, a city in the Holy Land. But when the Knights became a military order, they were sent to eastern Europe.
In 1211, the Burzenland (southeastern Transylvania) was given to the Teutonic Knights by King Andrew II of Hungary in return for guarding the southeastern border of the Kingdom of Hungary against the Cumans. When the Knights became too powerful, the king kicked the Knights out of Hungary.
Konrad I of Masovia, who was settling a frontier around Prussia in 1228, in order to stop the Prussian raids. In coordination with the Holy Roman Empire and Konrad, the Grand Master Hermann von Salza and his Teutonic Order arrived in the region, in 1230. Along with Konrad's forces, the Order pushed back the Prussian tribes and began to push further to conquer and Christianize them.
The Peace of Kalisz in 1343 solidified the Teutonic Knights' control over Danzig and surrounding areas of Prussia. The Teutonic Knights established a strong feudal state in Prussia and a significant port city in Danzig.
Danzig became a member of the Hanseatic League in 1361, enhancing its economic importance under Teutonic rule.
The region remained under the control of the Teutonic Order until the late 15th century, when conflicts with Poland began to alter its status.
Following the official adoption of Catholic Christianity by Lithuania in 1251, the last pagan state in Europe, the Teutonic Knights were no longer crusading. It was instead recruiting planters from the Holy Roman Empire and a fighting force to augment feudal levies. There were also wars against the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic. Through the Golden Bull of Rimini and Treaty of Kruszwica, the Order created the independent State of the Teutonic Order.
But in 1410, a Polish-Lithuanian army decisively defeated the Order State and broke its military power at the Battle of Grunwald. However, the Order State successfully defended its capital in the following Siege of Marienburg (see below) and was saved from collapse.
In 1515, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I made a marriage alliance with Sigismund I of Poland-Lithuania. Thereafter, the empire did not support the Order against Poland.
The Order did keep its considerable holdings in Catholic areas of Germany until 1809, when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered its dissolution and the Order lost its last secular holdings
However, the Order continued to exist as a charitable and ceremonial body. It was outlawed by Nazi Germany in 1938, but re-established in 1945.[11] Today it operates primarily with charitable aims in Central Europe.
MARIENBURG
The Teutonic Knights began building the fortress around 1274–1280, after conquering much of the territory of the pagan Old Prussians. It was named Marienburg, meaning “Mary’s Castle,” after the Virgin Mary, the order’s patron.
In 1309, Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen moved the order’s headquarters there. Marienburg was expanded into a vast fortified monastery and became the seat of the Grand Masters and the administrative capital of Teutonic Prussia. Construction continued into the early 15th century.
The castle survived several attacks, including during the Polish-Lithuanian wars. After the Teutonic defeat at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, it remained in Teutonic hands, but the order’s power weakened.
During the Thirteen Years’ War, the Teutonic Order could not pay its Bohemian mercenaries. In 1457, they handed the castle to King Casimir IV of Poland in exchange for unpaid wages. Marienburg then became a Polish royal residence and an administrative center of Royal Prussia
After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Marienburg became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. The neglected castle was used partly as barracks and a poorhouse and fell into disrepair.
Interest in the medieval German past led to major restoration campaigns during Germany's Romantic Period in 1816. Further work continued through the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Now it is called Malbork Castle. It is a museum and was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1997. It is particularly important because it preserves the scale and organization of the Teutonic Order’s monastic state.
TORUN
Toruń is one of the oldest cities in Poland; it was first settled in the 8th century and in 1233 was expanded by the Teutonic Knights.
From 1264 until 1411, Toruń was part of the Hanseatic League. During the Second World War, Toruń was spared bombing and destruction; its Old Town and iconic central marketplace have been entirely preserved.
In spring 1231 the Teutonic Knights along with Mazovian knights crossed the river Vistula near Nieszawa and established a fortress near today's village of Stary Toruń. On 28 December 1233, Teutonic Knights Hermann von Salza and Hermann Balk signed the city charters for Toruń (Thorn) and Chełmno (Kulm). In 1264 the adjacent New Town was founded, predominantly to house Torun's growing population of craftsmen and artisans, who predominantly came from German-speaking lands. In 1280, the city (or as it was then, both cities) joined the mercantile Hanseatic League, and thus became an important medieval trade center.
After the Second Peace of Thorn (1466), the Teutonic Order formally renounced all claims to the conquered lands, which returned to Poland as Royal Prussia. d remained part of it until the First (1772) and Second (1793) Partitions of Poland.
In 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was born to German-speaking parents in Torun, which was part of Royal Prussia at the time, a semi-autonomous and multilingual region created within the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland from lands regained from the Teutonic Order after the Thirteen Years' War.
Meanwhile, leaving Warmia in mid-1496—possibly with the retinue of the chapter's chancellor, Jerzy Pranghe, who was going to Italy—in the fall, possibly in October, Copernicus arrived in Bologna.[27] He and his brother Andreas enrolled in the faculty of law at the University of Bologna for the winter semester beginning on 19 October 1496 and joined the university's "German nation" (Natio Germanorum),[l] the largest of the university's foreign student associations, because German was their home language; its statutes of 1497 defined the "nation of the Germans" by German mother tongue.
