“.. the far-sighted planning of Grand Master Brother Hermann von Salza had so strengthened the Teutonic Order that it had many members and such power, riches and honour that word of its fame and good reputation had spread the length and breadth of the empire.” So describes the chronicler Nicolaus von Jeroschin the role of the fourth and arguably most influential of the grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights. His role in promoting and expanding the order is hard to exaggerate. Without his skill and energy, the Teutonic Knights would have ended up like the Order of the Knights of St. Thomas. Have you have never heard of the Knights of St. Thomas, a English chivalric military order founded as a field hospital during the siege of the city of Acre in 1191? Well, that is the difference one man can make, at least very occasionally.

The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.

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Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 2 – Hermann von Salza

Before we get into the story let me briefly reiterate that the History of the Germans podcast and all its offshoots, including the recently launched separate podcast on the Teutonic Knights are advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons. And you can become a patron too by signing up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or by making a one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com/support. And thanks a lot to Thomas E. O., Joseph L., Ales T. and the ghost of Wayne Knight from Jurassic Park who have already signed up.

His family were Ministeriales to the Landgraves of Thuringia. Ministeriales were a uniquely German institution. They had originally been unfree men, serfs, who had been trained in the use of knightly weapons. As unfree men they were the property of their master and could -at least in theory- be sent to do whatever the master demanded. In practice they lived a lifestyle almost indistinguishable from the lower aristocracy, they held castles and were sometimes exceedingly wealthy. But they did not have the freedoms of a true aristocrat to choose their master and refuse orders incompatible with their honour. All that resulted in a social inferiority complex for many Ministeriales families. One way to get elevated from serf knight to true knight was to join a chivalric order, which explains the attraction of the Teutonic Knights to this class and presumably to Hermann von Salza.

In 1210 when Hermann von Salza takes over the outlook is especially bleak. The early sponsors of the Teutonic knights had been the Hohenstaufen family, namely duke Frederick of Swabia and his brother, the emperor Henry VI. By 1210 the power of the Hohenstaufen seemed irretrievably lost. Philipp of Swabia the last of Henry VI’ brothers had fought an endless civil war for the Imperial crown against Otto IV from the House of Welf. Though he had won the war, he was murdered in 1208 on an unrelated matter. At that point Hohenstaufen power in the German lands collapsed. The empire went to Otto IV, archenemy of the Hohenstaufen and presumably uninterested in the tiny hospital in Acre, assuming he even knew about its existence.

There was still the baby boy Henry VI had left behind, the then last male member of the House of Waiblingen. He had by now turned 15 but watched powerless as Otto IV’s army was coming down to Sicily to link up with the rebels who wanted to remove him from his throne.

The new grandmaster urgently needed a new sponsor.

To fund all that, the chivalric orders, like other religious orders, received donations from lay people who were keen to benefit from the spiritual wealth their activities generated. That was initially quite easy since enthusiasm for crusading was huge and the momentum of the First Crusade pushed vast amounts of resources towards the Holy Land. But by the end of the 12th century the news from the Holy Land had been relentlessly bleak. The armies of the second crusade had been routed before even the first pilgrim set foot in Palestine. Jerusalem had fallen in 1187 and the various attempts to regain it had failed. The fourth crusade had turned into a travesty when the Venetian doge demanded the crusaders attack Christian Constantinople in lieu of payment for transport to the Holy Land.

To keep the cash flowing the church resorted to a system of indulgences, Ablaesse in German. I guess you have all heard about those in the context of the Reformation. In the 13th century they were still new and relatively reasonable. So for instance someone got convicted of a crime and ordered to go on crusade as penance, but was elderly or infirm. In that case he could pay someone else to go in his stead. To find such a person he could go to a chivalric order who would send one of their brothers in exchange for a sizeable contribution. Things got a bit more edgy when the papacy developed the theory of excess grace or “the treasury of merit”. The idea was that all the saints and martyrs had been so holy and worshipful that they had generated much more divine grace than they needed for the ticket to heaven. This excess divine grace was now administered by the church who would allocate it to those penitent sinners much in need of that elusive balm that wiped off their sins. To gain an indulgence a sinner had to perform a good deed, such as make a number of prayers, go on pilgrimage, serve the poor or infirm etc. One qualifying act was making a donation to a good cause, a hospital or orphanage.

As crusading euphoria died down and financing needs escalated in the 13th century, the popes passed some of that excess divine grace to the chivalric orders to pass out as indulgences to those who were willing to repent and support the crusading effort by making a donation.

These donations ranged from tangible items, like foodstuff or clothes to whole estates, castles and even entire counties. To manage the flow of donations and the estates, the chivalric orders established networks of administrative centres across Europe. These were usually run by a member of the military wing or the order who would be called a commander or a Komtur in German. So when you travel through Germany and find an estate or vineyard is called a Komtur or in France a Commanderie, that would usually mean it was once owned by a chivalric order.

A chivalric order operated very much like a modern charity, except for a slightly different attitude to the locals. Only a small number of knights were in the Holy land actually fighting Muslims in the same way as only a few Medicins sans Frontier are actually on the frontier. Like Oxfam, where a lot more people work in their high street shops than drill wells in Sahel, behind any Templar riding out to face up to Saladin’s noble fighters stood not just his squires but also a whole centurion of administrators and fundraisers in their commanderies way back home.

Andreas may already be familiar with the order since his influential wife Gertrud is from Bavaria and many of his advisers are German. But when king Andreas hears of the ambitious and industrious new master of the order he comes up with an idea.

Hungary had been the entry point for central Asians invaders since Attila the Hun. The early 13th century version of these attackers were the Cumans. As per usual, the Cumans were a pagan people who had conquered a large territory east of Hungary thanks to exceptional horsemanship and archery. Their constant attacks on the Hungarian border had resulted in a depopulated wasteland on the easters side of the kingdom. Inviting these Teutonic Knights to take over one of these buffer zones would be a great way to improve Hungary’s defences. And as an added benefit, King Andreas could claim to have supported the crusaders which would gain him some valuable excess divine grace.

It is likely that there were already some hardy German colonists there when the Teutonic knights arrived, but after they had established themselves more and more arrived from Germany, mainly from Saxony and Franconia. The abandoned farmland is brought under the plough, villages are established, the new province flourished and the Teutonic Knights gained a reputation as competent managers. And it wasn’t only a commercial adventure. Because the Cumans were pagans with little intention to convert, the Teutonic Knights were allowed fight them under they order’s rule. It was here, rather than the Holy Land where the Teutonic Knights first displayed their impressive military skill. They built strong castles, including Kronberg, modern day Brasov and the first Marienburg (Feldioara in Romanian). The castles protected the new settlements and formed bases for increasingly successful operations against the Cumans.

All these successes did however not last. The Hungarian nobles became increasingly concerned about the rising power and wealth of a well organised, coherent monastic state inside their kingdom. One of the issues with the Teutonic Knights was that they had vowed chastity and poverty, like monks. They had no children and did not own the land they administered personally. Therefore every little strip of land they had acquired would stay with the order for ever. As the order expanded, more and more land would be swallowed up and taken out of circulation. That was similar to normal monasteries, but those could be bullied to hand things over or appoint the nobles as bailiffs. But Teutonic Knights, not easy to bully.

The Hungarian nobles conclude that they need to get rid of these interlopers before it was too late. And they find an ally in Bela, the crown prince who is very much not a dutiful son of king Andreas. One story is that this aristocratic and filial opposition twists Andreas arm until he revokes the Teutonic Knight’s privileges. Another is that Andreas had become closer to the Templars and Hospitallers during his time in the fifth Crusade, preferring them to the scruffier Teutonic Knights. In any event an order is issued for them to leave.

The Knights protest to the pope and are reinstated, but that opens another can of worms. Being unsure about their position relative to the current and even more the future Hungarian king Bela, they seek Papal protection. They go as far as offering pope Honorius III sovereignty over their new province and chuck out the local bishop. At that point all of Hungary, including Andreas, unites against the order and they are trown out. The pope protests but to no avail.

As for the German colonists, they stay and live there until after the fall of the Berlin Wall. These are the famous Siebenburger Sachsen, the Transsylvanian Saxons who maintained their own culture and traditions for hundreds of years, creating a cultural landscape that is very high up on my bucket list to visit.

This baby son is none other than the emperor Frederick II. Hermann von Salza meets Frederick II in 1216 in Germany and the two men formed one of these rare political friendships that benefitted both sides equally. Hermann von Salza was Frederick II’s foreign secretary, his main interlocutor with the papacy. Despite the almost insurmountable political differences, Hermann von Salza’s was able to bring pope and emperor back to the negotiating table, again and again. Only after the grand master had died in 1239 did the true fight to the death between the two heads of Christendom break out.

But back to Hermann. The deal he got was that in exchange for all his advice, his help in keeping the papacy from going all out for him was that Frederick II would promote the Teutonic order at every opportunity. Whether that was a deal they agreed at their very first meeting in 1216 or at a later stage is unclear, but that is how it went down. Frederick handed over estates, castles and lands in Alsace, Thuringia, Franconia and Tyrol on top of generous donations in Sicily and Puglia. The Hohenstaufen supporters followed suit. For example the powerful Ministeriales of Munzenberg gave the order the hospital in Sachsenhausen today part of Frankfurt. And then there are the lords of Hohenlohe, a noble family from Franconia who claim to be loosely related to the Hohenstaufen. Their ancestral castle was Weikersheim, today one of Germany’s most remarkable Renaissance palaces and just 4 miles from my family home. More importantly for our story, the Hohenlohes were avid crusaders and upon return from the fifth crusade in 1219 they give the estate of Mergentheim to the order. Mergentheim would later become the administrative centre of the order in the German lands and after the loss of Prussia the seat of the Grand Master.

Talking about the fifth crusade, this is the first time the Teutonic Knights play a significant military role in the Holy Land. During the fifth crusade the Latins try something new. Instead of going straight for Jerusalem, they instead attack Egypt, which is more vulnerable. Hermann von Salza manages to recruit 700 crusaders for the undertaking which gives him a seat at the commanders’ table. The Fifth Crusade is in many ways a well-run operation led by locals, the king of Jerusalem and the masters of the chivalric orders, which may explain their initial success. They take the key trading city of Damietta after a long and difficult siege.

That cuts Cairo off from the mediterranean, which would end its hegemony in the east west trade. The sultan is prepared to offer the crusaders a great deal. They get Jerusalem back, minus the Al Aqsa Mosque, a lasting peace and the fragments of the Holy cross lost in the battle of Hattin. All that in exchange for just Damietta. Hermann von Salza and the king of Jerusalem, John of Brienna want to take the deal but some of the foreign crusaders led by the papal legate feel momentum is with them plus they have evidence that the mythical prester John will come to their aid. The Templars tip the balance to rejecting the offer and go off to take Cairo, at this point only the largest city west of India. The reason? The Templars cannot accept the sultan’s condition to keep the Al Aqsa Mosque as that meant losing their home on top of the Temple Mount, a home they haven’t had for decades, but still.

Hermann is sent home to bring more reinforcements and indeed convinces Frederick to send more troops, even though the emperor is tied up with various rebellions. When Hermann gets back ahead of the reinforcements, he is told that everyone is restless and they will get going now. He counsels against a move before the imperial reinforcements are there but is overruled. The usual crusading disaster follows. A Gung Ho attack in unsuitable terrain and the army is wiped out, everyone is captured. Meanwhile the imperial troops arrived in Damietta and wondered how the hack everyone had left without them. In the peace agreement, Damietta was returned to the sultan of Egypt and everybody went home having achieved precisely nothing. Everybody blames emperor Frederick II.

After that Frederick is constantly made to promise another crusade and for one or other reason had to cancel last minute. Several times it is Hermann von Salza’s diplomatic skill that stops the pope from excommunicating the emperor. To make crusading more attractive, Hermann organises for the emperor to marry Isabella, heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick uses this to immediately assume the title of king of Jerusalem, pushing aside his father in law, John of Brienne.

Throughout the 1220’s Hermann von Salza obtained various papal privileges that elevated the Teutonic Knights to the same status that the other two orders enjoyed. That is the moment when they were officially allowed to wear their iconic white cloak with the black cross, something they had done for a while already. There were multiple revisions to their rule and by the 1250s they had acquired the right to alter their rule themselves, without requiring papal permission.

In 1226 Frederick tries to rehabilitate himself by eventually going on crusade. He and Hermann set off for the Holy Land with a sizeable but not overwhelmingly powerful army. This turns out to be both the most effective and least successful crusade.

News of the emperor’s excommunication had reached Jerusalem and the Franciscans, always opposed to Frederick II, have been agitating against him. When the crusaders arrive, the local powers, the patriarch, the nobility and the masters of the other two orders and above all the ex-king and imperial father-in-law John of Brienne shun the emperor. Still Frederick II ploughs on. But, rather than wasting his men and treasure in another futile attempt to dislodge the Saracens, he negotiates with the sultan and gets pretty much the same deal the crusaders had negotiated before Damietta. For the first time in 40 years Christians were again in control of Jerusalem and most of its holy sites -excluding the Al Aqsa Mosque.

With the local population and leadership so hostile Frederick II and his men had to withdraw in haste. This adventure yielded little benefit for the emperor and his trusted advisor the grand master. Frederick II came back to his kingdom of Sicily that had been overrun by papal mercenaries whilst the Teutonic Knights position in the Holy Land had changed. The close association with the emperor materially increased the possessions the order held in the Holy Land, gaining them their new headquarters, the Starkenburg or Montfort just outside Haifa. But at the same time they found themselves ostracised by the local leaders, a situation that got worse as the struggle between pope and emperor escalated.

It is likely around this time that the order became more and more German. So far they had received donations from across Europe and the crusader states, having established houses in Armenia, Greece, the kingdom of Sicily, Central Italy, France and Spain. Some of the brothers had been French or Italian. But that is now gradually coming to an end.

Whilst all this unfolds, a letter had arrived in the Teutonic Knights headquarters that will have much larger consequences than any of the crusades in the Holy Land.

This is not the first time we encounter the Prussians, the Baltic people who lived between Poland and Lithuania. Those of you with good memory will recall St. Adalbert the friend of emperor Otto III who had set out to convert the Prussians in the 10th century; without much success. His slain body was bought back by the duke of Poland Boleslav the Brave and Otto III came to Gniesno to pray at his grave. The next missionary, Bruno von Querfurth was no more successful, gaining martyrdom within days of crossing into Prussian land. That was in 1009. After that local monasteries occasionally sent out missionaries into the Prussian lands, and some even returned alive, but not many. As for the Prussians, they remained obstinately pagan.

One of the fundamental problems was the fragmentation of the Polish rulers, the Piast dynasty. Ever since the death of Boleslaw III Wrymouth in 1138 the kingdom had split into multiple duchies, each ruled by a different branch of the Piast family. One of them was usually chosen as the “high duke” and nominal ruler of Poland, though his control over his cousins was very limited. The duchy of Masovia that Konrad ruled did not have the resources to defeat the Prussians and the other dukes were happy to come for a period of fighting, but had enough other problems that stopped them from running sustained campaigns.

In that situation the duke of Masovia put his hope into the concept of chivalric orders. And of those there were many, not just the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights. He negotiated with these three as well as with the Spanish order of Calatrava before founding his own order, the order of Dobrin or Milites Christi in Prussia. They attracted some 15 knights from Northern Germany who took over the border castle at Dobrin. But this new order had limited resources and was less successful in attracting colonists as their colleagues in Transylvania so that they could barely hold out in Dobrin.

If the Polish duke thought that the Teutonic Knights would be blown away by the generosity of the offer and would immediately saddle their horses to come to the rescue of his duchy, he was sorly mistaken.

For one, the Teutonic Knights saw their main purpose in the conquest and defence of the Holy Land. All this activity in Eastern Europe, including the activity in Hungary were always only ancillary to the main job.

Moreover, the debacle in the Burzenland had made them weary of princely promises, in particular from princes whose position wasn’t very stable. If they were going to do something like that again, they would only go with all belts and braces.

The problem with the Golden Bull is whether the emperor had jurisdiction over this territory. The basic argument for is that pagan lands were considered no-man’s land which therefore was the purvey of the heads of Christendom, the emperor and the pope. The counterargument would be that Poland had already built a presence in Kulm/Chelmno so that it was Christian land temporarily occupied by pagans, hence Polish and not Imperial. This debate about whether Prussia was part of the empire or not keeps rumbling on in the background and is the reason the elector Frederick of Brandenburg was crowned king in Prussia in Koenigsberg in 1701 rather than king of Prussia or king of Brandenburg.

In any event the Teutonic Order will conquer Prussia and rule it without paying homage to the king of Poland for most of its existence.

Now we will not talk about the conquest of Prussia this week. That will be in the next episode.

What I would like to do instead is bringing the story of Hermann von Salza to its conclusion. Hermann remained instrumental in all of Frederick II’s policies. He keeps travelling relentlessly between Germany, Italy, Sicily and the Holy Land, an astounding feat for a man who must be in his fifties or early sixties by now. He negotiates the reconciliation between Frederick II and pope Honorius III that keeps a lid on things for nearly a decade. He gets sent to negotiate the release of King Waldemar II of Denmark, a story we heard in the context of the foundation of Lubeck, episode 105.

To what extent Saint Elisabeth was coerced into sometimes cruel acts of self-harm and harm to her children by her spiritual guardian, the unquestionably vile inquisitor Konrad of Marburg is something I did discuss in one of the bonus episodes for patrons.

1235 also saw the negotiations about the incorporation of the Livonian sword brothers into the Teutonic Knights something we have already looked at in episode 110.

He keeps going to almost his very last day. On March 20th, 1239 Hermann von Salza succumbed to an unknown illness. In the following 11 years Frederick II and pope Innocent IV find themselves in a military and spiritual struggle that ends with the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen and 50 years later the removal of the papacy from Rome to Avignon.

As the fortunes of their great benefactor dims, the order’s path lies ahead sparkling in bright sunshine. As you may know, I am not an adherent of the Great Man view of history, but occasionally there are individuals who have an impact that goes beyond just managing the main political and economic currents well. And Hermann von Salza is one of them. Without his energy and skill the Teutonic Knight would have ended up like so many minor chivalric orders, the order of Saint Thomas, the Order of Calatrava, the Livonian word brothers etc., etc.

Now next week we will see what Hermann’s successors do with his legacy. We will move our focus to the North and take a look at how the Teutonic Knights gained Prussia, how they organised themselves and their territory and what made them so special. I hope you will join us again.