Teutonic Order

Also known as Order of the Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem

German hospitaller-military order founded at Acre in 1190 during the Third Crusade; it later became famous chiefly for its conquest of pagan Prussia, but its origin and first headquarters were in the Holy Land.

The Teutonic Order grew out of a German field hospital established at the siege of Acre in 1190 by merchants from Bremen and Lübeck. It was given a rule modelled on the Templars and was confirmed as a military order by Pope Innocent III in 1199. Throughout the 13th century its main fortresses in the Latin East were Montfort (Starkenberg) in western Galilee, which served as the order's headquarters from c. 1230 until its fall in 1271, and a complex of houses and estates in and around Acre.

Under its great Grand Master Hermann von Salza (1209–39) the order became the favoured tool of Emperor Frederick II in the Holy Land, and through Frederick's patronage it acquired estates in southern Italy and Sicily, the Hungarian Burzenland, and — most fatefully — the Polish-Prussian frontier, where in 1226 it was invited to conquer pagan Prussia. After Acre fell in 1291 the order's centre of gravity shifted decisively to the Baltic, and its Holy Land origin was largely forgotten.

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