Medieval German Conquest and Settlement in the Baltic, Bohemia and the Balkans

My latest lecture for my podcast "Prussian Socialism"

Prussian Socialism Episode 50: The Ostsiedlung: Medieval German Conquest and Settlement in the Baltic, Bohemia and the Balkans

Available below and on the Prussian Socialism Odysee page.

From the drippy forests of Thuringia to the lake-riddled swampland of Lithuania...

The lolling hills of Silesia to the harsh, alpine peaks of Transylvania...

Central Europe was invaded, peopled and organized from the West. Between 1150 and 1400 German farmers, merchants, warriors and holymen flooded across the Elbe and down the Danube in the first great European age of exploration. There, they encountered Slavs, Hungarians, and Balts... peoples sometimes thirsty for Western tech and trade, sometimes eager to defend their ways of life and national honor.

This great folk-movement, the Ostsiedlung (Settling of the East), is almost unknown in the English-speaking world. The standard textbooks might make passing mention of “German immigrants”, but nowhere in English will you find a comprehensive and fair treatment of this immense and history-shaping venture.

Nowhere, that is, except on Prussian Socialism... join Greg Conte in this lecture as he uncovers the Ostsiedlung. From the Teutonic Knights and the Siebenbürgen Saxons to the last doomed days of Kurland and Bohemia 1945... was it a peaceful movement dedicated to agricultural progress, the spread of Christianity and the organizing of sophisticated government? Or merciless exploitation and subjugation?

Progress or tyranny, life or death, German or Slav?

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Books mentioned in the lecture:

Higounet, Charles, Die Deutsche Ostsiedlung im Mittelalter, originally: Les Allemands en Europe centrale et orientale au Moyen âge (best scholarly work available)
Reimers, Erich, Der Kampf um den Deutschen Osten (popular work reflecting German attitude in 1942)

Urban, William, The Teutonic Knights a Military History (okay as an overview)
Urban, William, The Baltic Crusade (pretty good)
Urban, William, The Teutonic Knights Strike East (exciting)

Wilson, Peter H., Heart of Europe (suitable for info-mining)
Putzger, Friedrich Wilhelm, Historischer Schul-Atlas (outstanding maps)
Nash, E. Gee, The Hansa (readable, light)
Franzel, Emil, Sudetendeutsche Geschichte (quite good)

Ewald, Albert Ludwig, Die Eroberung Preußens durch die Deutschen 1872 (didn’t read but looks legit)
Voigt, Johannes, Geschichte Preußens 1827 (said to be out-of-date but no one has bothered replacing it)

Barraclough, Geoffrey The Origins of Modern Germany (Caution: extremely boring and badly focused)
Christiansen, Erich The Northern Crusades (Caution: cooly deliberate in its attempts to defy the reader’s understanding).