The Teutonic Knights: Rise and Fall of a Religious Corporation

About this event

| The Teutonic Knights, or Teutonic Order, were the last of the great military orders established in the twelfth century. Evolving into a powerful religious institution, they left a profound and enduring legacy, becoming one of the most pivotal forces in European history. In this talk we will explore the Order’s journey from a field hospital outside the walls of Acre during the Third Crusade to its remarkable rise as a major territorial ruler and power in northeastern Europe. Here, the rule of this remarkable religious corporation spanned three centuries and saw the construction of the largest castle in Europe as its headquarters. The Order’s decline in the fifteenth century was punctuated by a lengthy conflict with Poland-Lithuania and the secularization of its Prussian and Livonian branches during the Reformation. The medieval Order was subsequently re-imagined as the representative of German colonial power in the East by nationalists, an image that has only begun to fade in recent years.