Teutonic Knights

The Prussian State

Establishment of the Teutonic State in Prussia

The Teutonic state in Prussia was not founded by a single act of creation, nor by a single generation of founders. It was the slow precipitate of more than a century of conquest, settlement, negotiation and institutional invention, beginning with the Order’s acquisition of a territorial base on the lower Vistula in 1226 and ending, in most accounts, with the Treaty of Kalisz of 1343, by which the Polish crown finally recognised the Order’s sovereignty over the Prussian lands. The state that emerged from this long process was, by the standards of the thirteenth century, a remarkable political construction: a monastic brotherhood, bound by the Rule of St Augustine and the three monastic vows, holding sovereign jurisdiction over a Baltic territory larger than many of the German principalities.

The Golden Bull of Rimini

The legal foundation of the Teutonic state was the Golden Bull of Rimini, issued by Emperor Frederick II on 14 March 1226 and confirmed by Pope Gregory IX in 1234. The bull granted the Teutonic Order the right to hold and govern the lands of the Prussian tribes — Chriacia, Pomesania, Pogesania, and other territories — in perpetual possession, under the direct imperial authority, free of all episcopal and ducal jurisdiction. The bull was, in effect, a charter of sovereignty: it transformed the Order from a charitable brotherhood into a territorial prince.

The bull was not, however, the beginning of the Order’s involvement in Prussia. The Order had been invited to Prussia by Duke Conrad of Masovia, one of the Piast princes of the Polish ducal system, who in 1222 had appealed to the Order to come to his aid against the pagan Prussian tribes, who were raiding his duchy of Masovia. The Order had initially declined the invitation, on the grounds that its principal mission was the Holy Land, and the response was left to a different order: the Order of Dobrin, a small chivalric foundation that was established in 1225 and almost immediately destroyed. The Dobrin experience persuaded the Order to reconsider, and in 1226 Hermann von Salza, the Grand Master, travelled to Italy to secure the imperial confirmation that the Golden Bull provided.

The Golden Bull was thus a complex document, reflecting the interests of three parties. Frederick II was interested in the Christianisation of the Baltic as an extension of the imperial mission, and as a means of extending imperial influence into a region that had hitherto been dominated by the Piast dukes. Conrad of Masovia was interested in the cessation of the Prussian raids, and was prepared to cede the territory of Chriacia in exchange for the Order’s protection. Hermann von Salza was interested in the acquisition of a territorial base, and in the legal and political protection of the Order’s mission. The three interests coincided, and the Golden Bull of Rimini was the result.

Conrad of Masovia and the Prussian Crisis

The appeal of Conrad of Masovia is often cited, by modern historians, as the moment at which the Teutonic state was conceived. The appeal was made in the context of a serious crisis: the Prussian tribes, organised in a loose federation of clans and led by war-chiefs who assembled at the sanctuary of Romove, had been raiding the Polish duchies for several decades, and Conrad’s duchy of Masovia, on the border between the Polish heartland and the Prussian forests, was particularly exposed.

The Prussian tribes — divided into nine principal clans, of which the most important were the Sambians, the Natangians, the Warmians, the Bartians, the Pomesanians, the Pogesanians, the Chriacians, the Sudovians and the Skalvians — were not, a serious military threat to the Piast dukes. They were, however, a constant nuisance, and their raids had a serious economic and psychological effect on the Polish duchies. The appeal of Conrad was, in effect, a request for outside help, and the Order, with its crusading mandate and its access to the German military recruitment market, was the obvious candidate.

The Treaty of Kruschwitz, concluded in 1230 between Conrad and the Order, defined the terms of the Order’s presence in Prussia. The Order was to hold the territory of Chriacia, plus any further territory conquered from the Prussians, in perpetual possession. Conrad was to retain a formal sovereignty, but the practical sovereignty was to be the Order’s. The treaty was confirmed by the Golden Bull of Rimini, and the Order began its conquest of Prussia in 1231.

The Prussian Crusade

The conquest of Prussia was, in its scale and duration, one of the major campaigns of the thirteenth century. It was fought by a coalition of the Teutonic Order, the margraves of Brandenburg, the dukes of Pomerania, the Polish dukes, the Bohemian king, the Moravian margrave, and a fluctuating stream of crusaders from Germany, France, England and the other countries of western Christendom. The campaign lasted, in its principal phase, from 1231 to 1283, with a long tail of pacification operations continuing into the early fourteenth century.

The campaign was conducted in a series of seasonal operations. The Order and its allies would assemble a large force in the late spring, march into the Prussian forests, build a fort or a convent castle, and establish a base from which to conduct further operations during the summer. The Order’s principal innovation was the construction of the convent castle, a fortified complex of chapel, refectory, dormitory, chapter house, commander’s residence and great hall, which served as the headquarters of a Komturei and the centre of a region of pacified territory. The convent castles of Marienburg, Königsberg, Elbing, Thorn, Kulm and Christburg were the anchors of the Order’s territorial control.

The Prussian campaign was marked by a series of major Prussian revolts, of which the most serious were the revolts of 1242–1249, 1260–1274 and 1276–1283. The first revolt, led by the Sambian war-chief Herkus Monte, came close to expelling the Order from Prussia. The second revolt, which began with a great Prussian uprising in 1260, was the most serious of the three; it lasted fourteen years and required the diversion of substantial resources from the Holy Land and from the Livonian branch of the Order. The third revolt, which broke out in 1276, was the last; the Order, with the assistance of the Polish dukes and the Bohemian king, defeated the Prussians in a series of decisive engagements and concluded the conquest in 1283.

The Construction of the State

The construction of the Teutonic state was, in important respects, as significant as the conquest. The Order had to transform a conquered, depopulated and partly destroyed territory into a viable political and economic unit. The state was constructed on three principles: the establishment of a network of convent castles, the chartering of towns under the Kulm law, and the settlement of German immigrants in the towns and in the countryside.

The convent castles were the administrative centres of the state. The Komtur, the head of a Komturei, was responsible for the administration of justice, the maintenance of the castle, the receipt of the Order’s revenues, and the recruitment and quartering of the knight-brothers. The Komtureien were grouped into larger regional units, each under one of the five Grossgebietiger. The Grand Commander held the interior of the state, the Grand Marshal held the eastern marches against Lithuania, the Grand Hospitaller held the hospitals, the Grand Trapier held the wardrobe, and the Grand Chancellor held the chancery.

The towns were the commercial and demographic centres of the state. The Order chartered more than a hundred towns during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, of which the most important were Thorn, Kulm, Elbing, Danzig, Königsberg and Marienburg. The towns were governed by municipal councils, elected by the patrician burghers and confirmed by the Order. The towns were given the Kulm law, derived from the older Magdeburg law, which provided for a high degree of municipal self-government. The towns were settled, generally by German immigrants from the western German lands — from Westphalia, Lower Saxony, the Rhineland and other regions — who brought with them the technical skills, the commercial networks and the legal traditions of the German lands.

The countryside was settled, in part, by German immigrants — particularly in the western portions of the state, around Danzig, Elbing and Marienburg — and, in part, by the surviving native Prussians, who were gradually converted to Christianity and incorporated into the Order’s administrative system. The Order’s policy towards the native Prussians was, a pragmatic one: the Prussians were given the right to hold land, to marry, to inherit, and to be governed by their own customary law, in exchange for the payment of tribute and the obligation of military service.

The Acquisition of Pomerelia

The state was enlarged, in 1309, by the acquisition of the duchy of Pomerelia — the territory between the Vistula and the Oder — which the Order purchased from the Margrave of Brandenburg and from the heirs of the Samborides, the local ducal dynasty. The acquisition was contested: the Polish duke Wenceslaus of Płock claimed the territory, and the Order’s possession of it was a major source of tension between the Order and the Polish crown for the next century and a half. The acquisition was, however, decisive for the Order’s commercial policy: it gave the Order control of the whole of the Vistula, from the upper reaches of the river to the Baltic, and it brought the great city of Danzig under the Order’s sovereignty.

The acquisition of Pomerelia was followed, in 1309, by the transfer of the Grand Master’s seat from Venice to Marienburg. The transfer marked a decisive shift in the Order’s centre of gravity from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, and the beginning of the period that is conventionally called the golden age of the Teutonic state.

The Treaty of Kalisz of 1343

The state that had been established by the conquest of the thirteenth century and enlarged by the acquisition of Pomerelia was, in the early fourteenth century, still contested by the Polish crown. The Polish kings claimed suzerainty over the Prussian lands, and the Order’s possession of Pomerelia was a particular source of dispute. The dispute was eventually settled by the Treaty of Kalisz of 1343, by which the Polish king Casimir III the Great renounced all claims to the Prussian lands and to Pomerelia, in exchange for the Order’s renunciation of all claims to Kujavia and to the duchy of Dobrin. The treaty was a diplomatic triumph for the Order: it secured the Order’s possession of its Prussian territories and of Pomerelia, and it removed, for the time being, the principal source of tension between the Order and the Polish crown.

The Treaty of Kalisz did not, however, resolve all of the issues between the Order and the Polish crown. The Order’s relations with the Polish-Lithuanian union, created in 1386 by the marriage of the Lithuanian grand duke Jogaila to the Polish queen Jadwiga, would become a major source of conflict. The dispute over the ownership of the Samogitian lands would eventually lead to the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 and to the long decline of the Order.

The Long-Term Significance

The establishment of the Teutonic state in Prussia was one of the major political events of the thirteenth century. It created a substantial sovereign state on the south-eastern coast of the Baltic, a state that would last, in various forms, until 1525. It introduced the German town, the German legal tradition, and the German commercial network to a region previously dominated by the Prussian, Polish and Lithuanian tribal systems, and it created the legal and political framework for the development of the early modern Prussian state.

The state was, a successful experiment in monastic sovereignty. It was efficient, well-administered, and prosperous. It was, however, also a contested state: contested by the Polish crown, the Lithuanian grand dukes, and, eventually, by its own subjects. The Prussian Confederation and the Thirteen Years’ War would bring the state to its end, and the secularisation of 1525 would close the chapter altogether. But the state that was established in the thirteenth century had already left a deep imprint on the political, legal, economic and cultural life of the Baltic region.

Sources

The legal and political foundation of the state is examined in greater detail in the article on the Treaty of Kalisz of 1343, and the tribute system that the Order imposed on the surviving Prussian population is the subject of the article on the Prussian tribute system. For the subsequent flowering of the state, see the article on the Golden Age and the related pages on the reign of Winrich von Kniprode and the construction of Marienburg. For the commercial basis of the state, see the economy and trade section, and for the long collapse, see the Thirteen Years’ War.

By The Teutonic Knights Editorial Team · Last reviewed 13 June 2026 · About the team · QA log

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