Takeover of Danzig by the Teutonic Order

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Pomeranian with Danzig as part of the Teutonic Order State

The takeover of Danzig by the Teutonic Order on November 13, 1308 was an important event in the history of the city of Danzig , as a result of which the city and the greater part of the Polish Duchy of Pomerania were incorporated into the order state .

prehistory

Zwantepolc de Danceke, 1228

In the 13th century, Danzig (Dantzike) was a multi-ethnic port city under Lübischem law , which was fought over by several feudal lords, not least by the Pomeranian dukes among themselves.

Duke Swantopolk II "the great" ruled from Danzig in the years from 1220 to 1266 over Pomerania, from 1227 in fact sovereign. Emperor Friedrich II confirmed in a document the Brandenburg fiefdom over the Duchy of Pomerania the Griffin (but not over the Duchy of Pomerania the Samborids ), but this was contested by most of the Pomeranian dukes from the Griffin dynasty. During Swantopolk's II rule, Danzig was relocated according to Lübischem law, where German traders and merchants had already settled.

After the death of Swantopolk II, Pomerania got into succession battles between his sons and brothers. So his son Mestwin II supported himself in the early phase of his rule in the fight against his male relatives on the Ascanians from the Mark Brandenburg, his brothers and uncles also sought support from the Teutonic Order. The Mark Brandenburg received in the treaties of Arnswalde 1269 and Dragebrücke 1273 from Duke Mestwin II. Feudal lordship rights over parts of Pomeranian transferred. According to Polish historians, however, these rights were called into question in 1282 by the Treaty of Kempen between Mestwin II and the Duchy of Greater Poland . Conrad I , Margrave of Brandenburg-Stendal, took Danzig on behalf of Mestwin II. In 1271, but was expelled from this city in 1272 by Duke Bolesław the Pious of Wielkopolska, with whom Mestwin II had previously allied himself against Brandenburg. In 1282 the Teutonic Order inherited the town of Mewe from Duke Sambor II and came to the left side of the bank of the Vistula .

Fights within the Samborid dynasty , as well as the growing threat from the Mark Brandenburg and the Teutonic Order, led from 1278 to a closer connection between Pomerania and the Polish Duchy of Greater Poland. When Mestwin II died in 1294 without a male heir, Danzig fell to the Duke of Greater Poland and King of Poland Przemysław II under the Treaty of Kempen . This relocated Danzig under Magdeburg law . After his death in 1296, the Duke of Kujawy and later King of Poland Władysław I. Ellenlang took over his inheritance , but in 1299 he was ousted by the Bohemian King Wenceslaus II and expelled from Poland. After the murder of the last head of the Przemyslids Wenceslaus III. , 1306, Władysław I. Ellenlang, who had already returned to Poland from exile in Hungary in 1304, was again able to assert himself as sovereign in large parts of Poland, including Pomerania.

"Pomeranian Rebellion"

In the summer of 1307 there was a rebellion of the Pomeranian noble family of the Swenzonen , who had allied themselves with the Brandenburgers against the rule of Władysław I. Ellenlang. They urged their new feudal lords to take possession of Pomerania and Danzig. Margrave Waldemar von Brandenburg marched into Pomerania in 1308 and also took the main fortress of Danzig. The few Polish garrison troops holed up in the castle directly in front of the city, where they were besieged by the Brandenburgers.

The Pomeranian regional judge and castellan of the city of Danzig in Polish service, Bogusza, called on the advice of the Dominican prior Wilhelm in the interests of Władysław I, the Teutonic Order against the Brandenburgers.

A relief army of the Teutonic Knights under Heinrich von Plötzke and Günther von Schwarzburg (a relative of Günther von Schwarzburg of the same name ) reached the castle in August, whereupon the Brandenburgers gave up the siege without a fight and withdrew. The rebellious townspeople continued to resist and were besieged from September by the Polish garrison troops under Bogusza and the knights of the order. During the siege, the besiegers argued about their remuneration. Władysław I. refused to pay the knights 10,000 silver marks for their help. Finally Bogusza withdrew with the Polish garrison troops. The Teutonic Knights continue the siege of Danzig alone. On the night of November 12th and 13th, 1308, the knights stormed the city and ended the siege. Whether and how many civilians were killed in the storm is still a matter of dispute.

The Margrave of Brandenburg was defeated, but the Teutonic Order now held the city. Since Władysław I could not find the promised compensation of the knights, the order incorporated the city into its possession. In order to legally secure the possession of Pommerellen with Danzig, the Order bought all of their controversial Pommerellen possessions for 10,000 silver marks from the Brandenburgers in the Treaty of Soldin 1309. The Polish Duchy of Pomerania was thus divided between two German feudal states, the Mark Brandenburg and the Teutonic Order, bypassing the national rights of the Polish crown . The Pomeranian states around Stolp , Schlawe , Rügenwalde and Bütow remained near Brandenburg until 1317 , the larger remainder with the main festival Danzig went to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order.

controversy

What exactly happened on the night of November 12th to 13th, 1308, when the knights of the order conquered Danzig, was and is controversial, in the 14th century as well as in the 20th, especially in the period between and after the world wars and during the Cold War repeatedly taken up this topic for political and propaganda purposes. Earlier claims that the order had massacred 10,000 Poles have long been out of date. However, more than - as claimed by the Teutonic Order - 16 Polish knights were killed. Błażej Śliwiński recently assumed the death of a few thousand residents, but did not provide any evidence. However, it is now beyond doubt, also based on archaeological research, that large parts of the old city of Danzig were destroyed by the Teutonic Order; then a new city was built on the site of today's legal town.

The Gdansk website (as of July 15, 2008) states that the knights slaughtered the population. There is also a memorial to the massacre of the people of Gdansk in 1308.

Norman Davies , an English historian who is highly valued in Poland, writes that the knights expelled Waldemar and slaughtered the inhabitants in cold blood . Johannes Voigt wrote in 1830 that, after the Brandenburg margrave had left, the defenders of Danzig Castle later carried out the massacre on Brandenburg occupation troops left behind in the city and on citizens of Danzig, who had originally helped the Brandenburg troops to capture Danzig; see History of the City of Danzig .

The New Cambridge Medieval History (1999) reports in detail, but does not mention any crimes, only that the order had conquered other cities like Schwetz . However, the Danzig colony of German merchants had been attacked by the knights of the order because it was in competition with the city of Elbing , a Hanseatic city of the order.

The ethnic attribution of the population of Gdańsk at the time is also controversial.

consequences

The takeover of Danzig by the Teutonic Order, in the course of which a controversial number of the inhabitants of Danzig were killed, led to a rift between the Teutonic Order and the Polish dukes (or the later Kingdom of Poland), who were previously close allies in the common struggle against pagan Prussians . After the Kraków uprising of Bailiff Albert in 1311, Duke Władysław I. Ellenlang punished Germans in particular who failed a Polish language test.

There were further conflicts between Danzig and the order after the Battle of Tannenberg in 1410, as Danzig prematurely sided with the victorious Polish king, who won the battle but not the war. The new Grand Master Heinrich von Plauen had some councilors executed in 1411, including Arnold Hecht and Conrad Letzkau . This contributed to the rejection of the order and the formation of the Prussian League .

Danzig renounced the order in 1454 together with the Prussian Confederation and submitted to the Polish king as an autonomous part of Royal Prussia . In 1795 I. Rzeczpospolita was finally dissolved by Prussia, Austria and Russia through the third partition of Poland . The city republic of Danzig lost its autonomy and was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia of the Hohenzollern as early as 1793 , after it was excluded in 1772. Under Emperor Napoleon and between the World Wars , Danzig was a city ​​republic .

The German-Polish history of the port city was a bone of contention between Germans and Poles, not least here on the Westerplatte the Second World War began .

References

literature

  • Werner Neugebauer: New Polish research on the prehistory and early history of West Prussia , West Prussia yearbook 1953, Leer / Ostfriesland
  • Andrzej Zbierski: Początki Gdańska w świetle najnowszych badań (The beginnings of Gdańsk in the light of the latest research) in: Gdańsk, jego dzieje i kultura, Warsaw 1969, pp. 11-27
  • Wilhelm Brauer: Prussian settlements west of the Vistula , Siegen 1983, JG Herder-Bibliothek Siegerland e. V.
  • Heinz Lingenberg : The beginnings of the Oliva monastery and the development of the German city of Danzig , Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1982, ISBN 3-12-914900-7
  • Błażej Śliwiński, Rzeż i zniszczenie Gdańska przez Krzyżaków w 1308 roku. Gdańsk 2006.

Web links

Wikisource: Danzig  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edmund Cieślak: Historia Gdańska: Do roku 1454 . Wydawn. Morskie, 1978 ( excerpt from the Google book search - the oldest seal of the citizens of Gdansk from the 13th century is inscribed with Sigillum Burgensium in Dantzike ).
  2. ^ Heinz Lingenberg : The beginnings of the Oliva monastery and the emergence of the German city of Danzig: the early history of the two communities up to 1308/10 . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 978-3-12-914900-3 (The spelling Dantzike appears in documents from 1248 to 1305).
  3. ↑ Erich Keyser: The building history of the city of Danzig . Böhlau, Köhn; Vienna 1972, ISBN 3-412-95972-3 ( excerpt in the Google book search - while the seal was still in use in 1352, 1379 and 1399).
  4. ↑ cf. z. B. Udo Arnold and Marian Biskup (eds.): The German Order State Prussia in the Polish historiography of the present (= sources and studies on the history of the German Order , Volume 30). Verlag Wissenschaftliches Archiv, Bad Godesberg 1982, especially p. 130.
  5. ^ Norman Davies : God's playground: a history of Poland . Oxford University Press, Oxford; New York 1974, ISBN 0-19-925339-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  6. ↑ Poland 's Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Dzieje miast Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej: Polska w słowie i obrazach, 1928
  7. ^ Gieysztor, Alexander , Stefan Kieniewicz , Emanuel Rostworowski , Janusz Tazbir , and Henryk Wereszycki . History of Poland . PWN. Warsaw, 1979. ISBN 83-01-00392-8
  8. ^ ... the governor of the castle, Bogusza, called on the Teutonic Knights for help. Those having captured the castle in 1308 butchered the population. Since then the event is known as "the Gdańsk slaughter". - www.gdansk.pl: History of the City Gdańsk , accessed on May 22, 2012.
  9. ^ "Monument commemorates the massacre of the population of Gdansk in 1308." - Lech Krzyżanowski, Gdańsk, Sopot, Gdynia: A Guide to the Triune City, 1974.
  10. ^ Norman Davies : God's playground: a history of Poland . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 1979, ISBN 0-19-925339-0 , pp. 75 ( limited preview in the Google book search - the Knights "drove Waldemar from the city, and calmly slaughtered its inhabitants" ).
  11. ↑ "when the Poles refused to accept monetary compensation, the Order resolved the ensuing conflict by conquering further towns like Schwetz" - David Abulafia et al., The New Cambridge Medieval History, 1999, Vol. 5
  12. ^ William Urban: The Teutonic Knights. A Military History. Greenhill Books, London 2003, ISBN 1-85367-535-0 .