Germany during the Crusades
The Rest of Germany
There is one development worth noting, beyond the boundaries of a strict imperial narrative. Well, there are many other developments worth noting, but this one touches on our central focus of crusading. That development is the expansion of German population and culture into eastern Europe.
This expansion began around the time the crusading movement began; that is, in the late 11th century; and it ended, or rather declined sharply, around the time the crusading movement ended (which, too, declined rather than abruptly ended). The main thrusts came along the south shores of the Baltic Sea, and into south-eastern Europe roughly in the area of Hungary. I happen to know the first a bit better than the second and will focus on that.
German Christians had been moving eastward for some time, but had suffered a reverse in a massive Slavic uprising and invasion in 1066. This put the line between Christian Germany and pagan Slavia more or less along the line of the Elbe River (which runs right through the middle of modern Germany). When you read about the German "drive to the East" (Drang nach Osten), historians are specifically talking about expansion beyond the Elbe.
That expansion was in part due to population pressures, in part due to a drive for economic expansion, in part due to political ambitions, and in part was due to an evangelical drive to convert pagans to Christianity. For in 1100, much of Europe east of the Elbe River was pagan. The chief exceptions were parts of Poland and some of Austria.
As you know from reading the earlier part of this essay, the Salian emperors were preoccupied with other matters, but starting with Lothair II there was imperial support for princes who wanted to expand eastward. For example, it was Henry the Lion, the great Welf, who chartered the city of Lübeck, which became one of the leading cities of the German expansion Lübeck sits at the west end of the Baltic Sea). Already in 1108, German bishops were asking the pope to proclaim a crusade against the pagans across the Elbe. In 1147, a pope did indeed proclaim a crusade, known as the Wendish Crusade, which was directed against the Slavs of Pomerania and Brandenburg.
The Wendish Crusade was a failure, but German expansion continued nevertheless. By the early 1200s a number of towns along the Baltic Coast were controlled by Germans and they began making trade agreements with one another. This was the foundation of what eventually was called the Hanseatic League.
Also in the early 1200s the Teutonic Knights started getting lands granted to them in Europe. At first it was a bit here in Hungary and a bit there in Sicily, but in 1225 Conrad of Masovia (northern Poland) invited the Teutonic Knights to come to fight the Prussi, one of the last of the pagan tribes inhabiting the southern Baltic coast. They invaded in earnest in the 1230s and in 1234 Prussia became a papal fief, which the pope then leased to the Teutonic Knights. In 1237 the Sword-Brothers of Livonia (modern Latvia and Estonia) joined with the Teutonic Knights and a pretty extensive state was formed at the east end of the Baltic.
Between the Teutonic Knights, who ruled at least some part of these lands down to the 16th century, and the Hanseatic League, which was influential until roughly the same period, German people and German culture penetrated deeply into the cities and, to a lesser extent, into the countryside.
The tie between expansion and crusading persisted. The 14th century was the heyday of the Lithuanian crusades. The Letts were the last major pagan people in Europe, and they were the target of annual invasions. Indeed, it became a sort of industry, with Teutonic Knights leading visiting knights from England or France or Germany on expeditions into the deep forests of Lithuania, all under crusader privileges. German influence was never deep here, though. They never conquered the Letts, and in 1368 the King of Lithuania agreed to convert to Christianity so he could marry a Polish princess.