The Order of the Teutonic Knights of St. Mary's Hospital in Jerusalem, formed at the end of the twelfth century in Acre, in the Levant, had played an important role in Outremer, controlling the port tolls of Acre.
After Christian forces were defeated in the Middle East, the Order had moved to Transylvania in 1211 to help defend Hungary against the Cumans.
They had been expelled in 1225 after allegedly attempting to place themselves under Papal instead of Hungarian sovereignty.
Following the Golden Bull of Rimini, Grand Master Hermann von Salza and Duke Konrad I of Masovia had made a joint invasion of Prussia in 1230 to Christianize the Baltic Old Prussians in the Northern Crusades.
The knights were then accused of cheating Polish rule and creating an independent monastic state.
Once established in Prussia, the Order had become involved in campaigns against its Christian neighbors, the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic (after assimilating the Livonian Order in 1237).
The neighboring country of Lithuania having accepted Christianity in the second half of the thirteenth century, the Order’s main purpose in Europe is lost.
The Teutonic Knights have a strong economic base.
Hiring mercenaries from throughout Europe to augment their feudal levies, they have become a naval power in the Baltic Sea.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Pomerania, a neighboring region to the Ordensstaat, or Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights, had plunged into war with Poland and Brandenburg to the west.
Brandenburg's rulers, who had ruled Pomerelia (Eastern Pomerania) in the 1250s, enter into a treaty on August 8, 1305 with Wenceslaus III of Bohemia, promising the March of Meissen to the Bohemian crown in exchange for Pomerelia.
