Everything about Prussians totally explained
» "Prussians" redirects here. "Prussians" may also refer to citizens of the former German state of Prussia.
The
Old Prussians or
Baltic Prussians (or
Prußen; ; ; ; ) were an
ethnic group, made up of the
Baltic tribes that inhabited
Prussia, the lands of the southeastern
Baltic Sea in the area around the
Vistula and
Curonian Lagoons. They spoke a language now known as
Old Prussian and followed a religion believed by modern scholars to be closely related to
Lithuanian paganism with such gods as
Perkūns. During the 13th century, the Old Prussians were conquered by the
Teutonic Knights, and gradually
Germanized over the following centuries. The former
German state of
Prussia took its name from the Baltic Prussians, although it was led by
Germans who had assimilated the Old Prussians; the old Prussian language was extinct by the 17th century.
The land of the Old Prussians consisted approximately of central and southern
East Prussia — the present-day
Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship of
Poland, the
Kaliningrad Oblast of
Russia, and the southern
Klaipėda Region of
Lithuania.
Etymology
The names of the Prussian tribes all reflected the theme of landscape. Most of the names were based on water, an understandable convention in a land dotted with thousands of lakes, streams, and swamps (the
Masurian Lake District). Indeed, that landscape caused the very partial isolation that preserved the
Baltic language group as the most archaic in Europe. To the south, the terrain runs into the
Pripet Marshes at the headwaters of the
Dnieper River; these have been an effective barrier over the millennia.
The original pre-Baltic settlers generally named their settlements after the streams, lakes, seas, or forests by which they settled. The clan or tribal entities into which they were organized then took the name of the settlement. For example,
Barta, the home of the
Barti, is related to the name of the
Bartis River in Lithuania, and such words as the
Albanian berrak and
Bulgarian bara, both meaning "swamp". A
*bor- root can be reconstructed, meaning "swamp", to come from the o-grade of
Indo-European *bher-; Indo-European has several
*bher- roots, however, so the exact meaning and line of descent is unclear.
This root is perhaps the one used in the very name of
Prusa (Prussia), for which an earlier
Brus- is found in the map of the
Bavarian Geographer. In Tacitus'
Germania, the
Lugii Buri are mentioned living within the eastern range of the Germans. Lugi may descend from
Pokorny's *leug- (2), "black, swamp" (Page 686), while
Buri is perhaps the "Prussian" root.
The name of
Pameddi (
Pomesania) tribe is derived from the words
pa ("by" or "near") and
meddin ("forest") or
meddu ("honey").
Nadruvia and may be a compound of the words
na ("by" or "on") and
drawē ("wood") or
na and the root
*dhreu- ("flow" or "river"). The name of the
Bartians, a Prussian tribe, and the name of the Bārta river in Latvia are possibly cognates.
In the 2nd century AD, the geographer Claudius
Ptolemy listed some
Borusci living in European Sarmatia (in his
Eighth Map of Europe), which was separated from Germania by the
Vistula Flumen. His map is very confused in that region, but the Borusci seem further east than the Prussians, which would have been under the
Gythones (
Goths) at the mouth of the Vistula. The Aesti (Easterners) recorded by Tacitus were recorded later by
Jordanes as part of the Gothic Empire.
Folk etymology led to the belief that each Prussian tribe was named after a tribal leader or his wife, such as the mythical leader Warmo ruling the
Warmians.
Organization
At the beginning of
Baltic history, the Old Prussians were bordered by the
Vistula and the Memel - earlier Mimmel - river, which outside of Prussia is called
Neman Rivers with a southern depth to about Thorn at the Vistula river, which was Prussian, and the line of the River
Narew. The
Kashubians and
Pomeranians were on the west, the
Poles on the south, the
Sudovians (sometimes considered a separate people, other times regarded as a Prussian tribe) on the east and further south, the
Scalovians on the north, and the
Lithuanians on the northeast. The Sudovians began at about
Suwałki.
At the end of the
1st century, Prussian settlements were probably divided into tribal domains, separated from one another by uninhabited areas of forest, swamp and marsh. A basic territorial community was perhaps called a
laūks, a word attested in Old Prussian as "field". This word appears as a segment in Baltic settlement names, especially
Curonian, and it's found in Old Prussian placenames such as
Stablack, from
stabs (stone) +
laūks (field, thus
stone field). The plural isn't attested in Old Prussian, but the Lithuanian plural of
laukas ("field") is
laukai.
A
laūks was formed by a group of farms, which shared economic interests and a desire for safety. The supreme power resided in general gatherings of all adult males, who discussed important matters concerning the community and elected the leader and chief; the leader was responsible for the supervision of the everyday matters, while the chief (the
rikīs) was in charge of the road and watchtower building, and border defence, undertaken by
vidivariers.
The term
laūks must have included the fortifications, if any, and the social superstructure, but the village itself went by another name:
kāims. The head of a household was the
buttataws (literally, the
house father, from
buttan, meaning
home, and
taws, meaning
father).
In the natural course of competition and heredity, some chiefs must have become very powerful, acquiring various
laūks and
kāims as subordinate entities. The Balts entered history in the early
2nd millennium BC and were organized into these larger social entities, one of which was termed a "duchy" by non-Baltic writers.
Because the
Baltic tribes inhabiting Prussia never formed a common political and territorial organisation, they'd no reason to adopt a common ethnic or national name. Instead they used the name of the region from which they came —
Galindians,
Sambians,
Bartians,
Nadrovians,
Natangians,
Scalovians,
Sudovians, etc. It isn't known when and how the first general names came into being. This lack of unity weakened them severely, similar to the condition of
Germany during the
Middle Ages.
The Prussian tribal structure is most fully attested in the
Chronicon terrae Prussiae of
Peter of Dusburg, a priest of the
Teutonic Order. The work is dated to 1326. He lists eleven lands and ten tribes, which were named geographically basis. These were :
Peter noted that the eleventh land,
Kulm, to the southwest of
Pomesania, was nearly uninhabited. After the German conquest of Prussia, the country was divided along almost these exact lines, although the Germans added a twelfth land which they called
Sassen, centred at
Tannenberg. Those names are not, perhaps, exhaustive. Many of the names appear in ancient and medieval sources, but the spelling and to some degree the morphology vary. Peter of Dusburg, for example, preferred
Latin names, such as the Pomesani, Pogesani, Varmienses, etc.
(in
Anglo-Saxon) (
English translation
) describes a voyage by a Norseman called
Wulfstan to the land of the Old Prussians, to the area around
Elbing; he describes their
funeral customs.
History
Aesti are called
Brus by the
Bavarian Geographer in the 9th century.
More extensive mention of the Old Prussians in historical sources is in connection with
Adalbert of Prague, who was sent by
Boleslaw I of the
Polans. Adalbert was slain in 997 during a missionary effort to
Christianize the Prussians. As soon as the first Polish dukes had been established with
Mieszko I in 966, they undertook a number of conquests and crusades not only against Prussians and closely related
Sudovians, but against
Pomeranians and
Wends as well. . Masos, an estranged former leader under Boleslaw of Poland, took refuge in the Prussian lands. From him stems the independent duchy of
Masovia, which upon extinction of the last duke was taken over by Poland.
In 1124, at the request of
Bolesław III, Bishop
Otto of Bamberg undertook a mission to Pomerania to convert the Prussians there. This brought on a new danger for the Prussians. Beginning in 1147, the Polish duke
Bolesław IV the Curly (securing help of
Ruthenian troops) tried to subdue Prussia, supposedly as punishment for close cooperation of Prussians with
Władysław II the Exile. The only source is unclear about the results of his attempts, vaguely only mentioning that the Prussians were defeated. Whatever were the results, in 1157 some Prussian troops supported the Polish army in their fight against Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa. In 1166 two Polish dukes, Bolesław IV and his younger brother
Henry, came into Prussia, again over the Ossa River. The prepared Prussians led the Polish army, under leadership of Henry, into an area of marshy morass. Whoever didn't drown was felled by an arrow or by throwing clubs, and nearly all Polish troops perished. From 1191-93
Casimir II the Just invaded Prussia, this time along the river Drewenz (
Drwęca). He forced some of the Prussian tribes to pay tribute, and then withdrew.
Several attacks by
Konrad of Masovia in the early 1200s were also successfully repelled by the Prussians. In 1209
Pope Innocent III commissioned the
Cistercian monk
Christian of Oliva with the conversion of the pagan Prussians. In 1215, Christian was installed as the first bishop of Prussia. The Duchy of Masovia, and especially the region of
Culmerland, become the object of constant Prussian counter-raids. In response,
Konrad I of Masovia called on the
Pope for aid several times, and founded a military order (the
Order of Dobrzyń) before calling on the
Teutonic Order. The results were edicts calling for
Northern Crusades against the "marauding, heathen" Prussians.
In 1224, Emperor
Frederick II proclaimed that he himself and the
Empire took the population of Prussia and the neighboring provinces under their direct protection; the inhabitants were declared to be
Reichsfreie, to be subordinated directly to the Church and the Empire only, and exempted from service to and the jurisdiction of other dukes. The Teutonic Order, officially subject directly to the Popes, but also under the control of the empire, took control of much of the Baltic, establishing their own
monastic state in Prussia.
During an attack on Prussia in 1233, over 21,000 crusaders took part, of which the burggrave of Magdeburg brought 5,000 warriors, Duke Henry of Silesia 3,000, Duke Konrad of Masovia 4,000, Duke Casimir of Kuyavia 2,000, Duke Wladislaw of Greater Poland 2,200 and Dukes of Pomerania 5,000 warriors. The main battle took place at the
Sirgune River and both sides had heavy losses. The Prussians took the bishop Christian and imprisoned him for several years.
Numerous knights from throughout Catholic Europe joined in the
Prussian Crusades, which lasted sixty years. Many of the native Prussians from Sudovia who survived were resettled in
Samland; Sudauer Winkel was named after them.
Frequent revolts, including a major rebellion in 1286, were defeated by the Teutonic Knights.
In 1243, papal legate
William of Modena divided Prussia into four bishoprics —
Culm,
Pomesania,
Ermland, and
Samland — under the
Bishopric of Riga. Prussians were
baptised at the
Archbishopric of Magdeburg, while
Germans and
Dutch settlers colonized the lands of the native Prussians;
Poles and
Lithuanians also settled in southern and eastern Prussia, respectively. Significant pockets of Old Prussians were left in a matrix of Germans throughout Prussia and in what is now the
Kaliningrad Oblast. Their language eventually became extinct as a separate ethnic group.
The monks and scholars of the Teutonic Order took an interest in the language spoken by the Prussians, and tried to record it. In addition, missionaries needed to communicate with the Prussians in order to convert them. Records of the
Old Prussian language therefore survive; along with little-known
Galindian and better-known
Sudovian, these records are all that remain of the West Baltic language group. As might be expected, it's a very archaic Baltic, showing affinities with
Proto-Germanic. While the Old Prussian language is very different, some scholars support the theory that a common
Balto-Slavic language once existed, due to a number of Baltic people living in Belarus and Ukraine, where traces of Baltic languages can still be found.
The newly built cities in Prussia and Old Prussians resisted the Teutonic Knights, and received help from the
Polish-Lithuanian Union during the 15th century in their quest to free themselves of the military order. In 1525 Grand Master
Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach secularized the Order's Prussian territories into the Protestant
Duchy of Prussia, a vassal of the crown of Poland. The Old Prussians rose again in rebellion, but were defeated by the authorities of Prussia. During the
Protestant Reformation,
Lutheranism spread throughout the territories, officially in the Duchy of Prussia and unofficially in the Polish province of
Royal Prussia, while Catholicism survived in the
Bishopric of Warmia. With Protestantism came the use of the
vernacular in church services instead of
Latin, so Albert had the
Catechisms translated into Old Prussian.
Because of the conquest of the Old Prussians by Germans, the Old Prussian language probably became extinct with the decimation of the rural population by the plague of 1701, but translations of the
Bible, Old Prussian poems, and some other texts survived and have enabled scholars to reconstruct the language.
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