State of the Teutonic Order

The State of the Teutonic Order was a theocratic state founded by the Teutonic Knights along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea. It grew from the Order's conquest of Prussia, begun after Grand Master Hermann von Salza received imperial and papal authorization in the 1220s and 1230s. The knights built a network of brick castles, founded cities under German law and drew settlers from the Holy Roman Empire. By the fourteenth century the state stretched from Pomerelia to Livonia and controlled much of the Baltic trade. Its defeat by Poland and Lithuania at Grunwald in 1410, followed by the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466, stripped it of Pomerelia, Danzig and Warmia, leaving a reduced territory around Konigsberg. The Prussian branch was secularized in 1525, when Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach converted to Lutheranism and became Duke of Prussia under Polish overlordship. The Livonian branch continued within the Livonian Confederation until the Livonian War, when it was dissolved in 1561. The state was thus one of the major powers of medieval northeastern Europe.