BRANDENBURG AND POMERANIA
German expansion began early in the tenth century, when Henry the Fowler annexed Brandenburg between the Elbe and the Oder. [34] Subsequently much of the territory between the Oder and the Vistula, including Pomerania on the southern coast of the Baltic, came under German control. The Slavic inhabitants were exterminated or reduced to slavery. Their place was taken by thousands of German colonists, who introduced Christianity, built churches and monasteries, cleared the woods, drained the marshes, and founded many cities destined to become centers of German trade and culture.
PRUSSIA
Between the Vistula and the Niemen lay the lands of the Prussians, a non- Teutonic people closely related to the Slavs. The Prussian language and religion have disappeared, the Prussians themselves have been completely absorbed by the Germans who settled in their country, but the Prussian name is borne to-day by one of the great states of modern Europe.
THE TEUTONIC ORDER
The conquest and conversion of the Prussians was accomplished by the famous order of Teutonic Knights. It had been founded in Palestine as a military-religious order, at the time of the Third Crusade. [35] The decline of the crusading movement left the knights with no duties to perform, and so they transferred their activities to the Prussian frontier, where there was still a chance to engage in a holy war. Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Teutonic Order flourished, until its grand master ruled over the entire Baltic coast from the Vistula to the gulf of Finland. The knights later had to relinquish much of this region to the Slavs, but they sowed there the seeds of civilization. Russia's Baltic provinces [36] are to-day the richest and most advanced in the empire.
POLITICAL GERMANY
Germany at the close of the Middle Ages was not a united, intensely national state, such as had been established in England, France, and Spain. It had split into hundreds of principalities, none large, some extremely small, and all practically independent of the feeble German kings. [37] This weakness of the central power condemned Germany to a minor part in the affairs of Europe, as late as the nineteenth century. Yet Germany found some compensation for political backwardness in the splendid city life which it developed during the later Middle Ages. The German cities, together with those of Italy and other European lands, now call for our attention.
[Illustration: Map, GERMAN EXPANSION EASTWARD DURING THE MIDDLE AGES]