Research into medieval settlement in the East by German historians did not really begin until the 19th century. Conceptually, the terminology has evolved from ‘Germanisation’ or ‘Germanisation’ and ‘(Eastern) colonisation’ or ‘East German colonisation’, via ‘German expansion eastwards’ and ‘German movement eastwards’, to ‘German settlement in the East’ or ‘settlement under German law’. Owing to the realisation that this developmental process involved not only Germans but also other Central and Western European settlers, as well as the local population, the term ‘(High Medieval) Eastern settlement’ is now predominantly used in German; whereas the term ‘colonisation’ – which is common in most other languages – is often avoided in German, except in compound terms such as ‘colonisation under German law’ or ‘medieval land development and colonisation’, due to its alleged linguistic proximity to modern-day colonialism.

English: colonisation, Polish: kolonizacja (German), Slovak: kolonizácia, Czech: kolonizace, Hungarian: kolonizáció, Romanian: colonizare

The pan-European process of cultural expansion and territorial development during the Middle Ages, driven by the creation of new settlements and farms in response to population growth in the existing settled areas, began after an initial phase in the 7th century, and, from the mid-10th century onwards, gained momentum, initially in Catalonia, and spread – with varying time lags – as far as Eastern Europe; around the mid-14th century, it essentially came to a standstill due to various crises (plague epidemics, natural disasters, political unrest) and continued only in the eastern peripheral regions, which were less affected by these events, until the 16th century.

Phases of German eastward settlement according to
W. Kuhn. [Wikimedia Commons].

Photo:Ziegelbrenner/CC BY-SA 3.0

As part of this development, the historiographical term ‘Eastern Settlement’ refers to the process of settlement and acculturation that took place in the regions east of the imperial border at the end of the 11th century, extending as far as the Gulf of Finland, the Black Sea and the Sava River, and was driven primarily by German peasants, craftsmen and merchants. During the main phase of the Ostsiedlung, from the mid-12th to the end of the 14th century, the German settlement and linguistic area expanded by more than a third. This High Middle Ages expansion of the realm, in which, alongside German settlers (coloni Theutonici), other foreigners (e.g. Flemings, Imperial Romans, Danes) and, above all, the indigenous population (Slavs, Balts), brought about a transformation and reorganisation of economic, legal and constitutional developments in eastern and south-eastern Central Europe, and thus the material, cultural and institutional alignment of ‘New Europe’ with ‘Old Europe’ (Oskar Halecki). Although the eastward settlement was, in some instances, linked to conquest and Christianisation (the area between the Elbe and the Oder, and the Teutonic Order’s territory of Prussia), for the most part it proceeded peacefully on the initiative of local lords and landowners.

Owing to the long-standing ideologisation of the image of eastward settlement – which has prevailed since the 19th century as a result of ethnic issues – this has been one of the most hotly contested topics between Slavic and German historical scholarship, with catchphrases such as ‘Drang nach Osten’ or ‘aggression by German feudal lords’ on the one hand, and ‘the great achievement of the German people’ (in the sense of a cultural transmission theory) on the other, marking the extreme positions. Owing to broader, comparative and methodologically pluralistic research approaches – and not least, above all, to the recognition of the pan-European context of this process of cultural expansion – a rapprochement has emerged since the Second World War – initially still tentatively, but becoming increasingly prominent from the Reichenau conferences of the Konstanz Working Group for Medieval History between 1970 and 1972 at the latest – a convergence of these controversial viewpoints has taken place; today, nationalist perspectives play virtually no role in academic scholarship.

Up until the turn of the 12th to the 13th century, there were significant differences in settlement patterns across the southern Baltic region, the West Slavic territories, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Duchies of Styria and Carinthia, and the Margraviate of Carniola. Extensive, almost uninhabited wasteland (primarily woodland, marshland and mountainous terrain) contrasted with isolated settlement areas on land suitable for agriculture, with population densities of over 20 inhabitants per km². Around the turn of the millennium, during the initial phase of internal land development, a process of settlement densification and concentration began, replacing older, partly semi-nomadic ways of life. The peasant population lived in hamlet-like village settlements, most of which had a small number of inhabitants. Alongside this, markets developed as places of residence for merchants and craftsmen, some situated near the sovereign’s castles (suburbs), others along long-distance trade routes as trading posts, most of which already had a certain proportion of skilled foreign workers who had migrated there; with the spread of the monetary economy from the 12th century onwards, smaller local markets also emerged alongside these. The most significant of these pre-urban agglomerations, which enjoyed certain market privileges granted by the feudal lords (e.g. Danzig/Gdańsk, Posen/Poznań, Breslau/Wrocław, Krakau/Kraków, Prag/Praha, Brno/Brünn) may indeed constitute towns in the economic sense; however, there is no evidence of towns governed by Polish or other Slavic law. Despite significant social and legal differentiation, the majority of the population was subject to multiple forms of dependence on sovereigns and on ecclesiastical and noble landowners; there was no municipal association with a role in administration or the judicial system. Extensive farming methods (grassland farming) predominated in agriculture, whilst livestock breeding and subsistence activities (hunting, fishing, beekeeping) continued to play an important role.

From the second half of the 12th century, in a second phase of land development, the sovereigns and, in isolated cases, landowners (e.g. in South Moravia) sought to bring about an economic evolution of their lands and estates and an increase in population numbers to boost their revenues, partly by utilising local resources through improvements to the system of peasant corvée labour – as indicated by place names such as the Czech ‘Lhota’ and the Polish ‘Lgota’ (= reduction) – and partly through the settlement of so-called ‘free guests’ (hospites). Although these initiatives did not attain any large-scale significance, they nevertheless formed, together with the existing market system, a crucial internal prerequisite for the colonisation under German law that began at the start of the 13th century.

In its early phase, around 1200, the German settlement in the east extended in its north-eastern section roughly along the line Schwerin – Spandau – Dresden; south of the Bohemian-Moravian border mountains, it had advanced as far as the Thaya and March rivers, and opposite the Arpad Kingdom as far as the line from Hainburg on the Danube to Marburg on the Drava/Maribor (early exceptions: the settlement of ‘Saxons’ as border guards in the north – Spiš – and south-east – Transylvania – of the Kingdom of Hungary from the 12th century onwards). Key drivers of the expansion of the territory, progressing from west to east and south and south-east, were the steady population growth in the western, traditionally settled lands, the development of the Western European town as a civic community and, above all, advances in agricultural and land-improvement techniques (three-field crop rotation, the wheel plough with skimmer, the long-handled scythe, water and windmills, dyke construction systems), the individual elements of which – despite having been used in some cases for longer – only brought about the ‘agricultural revolution’ in the East Central European region in conjunction with changing economic systems, population movements and the restructuring of social structures. In the eastern border and borderland regions of the Empire (e.g. the foothills of the Ore Mountains in the Mark of Meissen), the settlement and legal structures that served as models for the development of Eastern Central Europe were developed in the 12th century. The fundamental equality of all settlers on cultivated land necessitated the systematic allocation of plots of equal size and value (Hufen, mansi). In the plains with more extensive prior settlement, the adaptable village on common land with Flemish ‘Hufen’ (approx. 16.8 ha) – and in Pomerania and Prussia, alongside these, also with ‘Hakenhufen’ (approx. 9.8 ha) — whilst on forested land and in the foothills extending into mountainous regions, the more strictly structured ‘Waldhufendorf’ with Franconian ‘Hufen’ (approx. 24.2 ha) prevailed. The diverse organisational tasks associated with settlement planning and implementation were entrusted to settlement contractors (locators, ‘settlement masters’), mostly from the lower nobility or the bourgeoisie, who, in return, received from the landlords landholdings exempt from rent and tithes, the hereditary office of village mayor or village judge in the villages or the bailiwick in the towns—with income from lower-level jurisdiction—as well as local commercial enterprises and the rights to operate mills and taverns. The settlers were granted personal freedom and freedom of movement, unrestricted rights of disposal over the allocated property (hereditary lease) with contractually stipulated obligations (fixed rent and tithes, participation in national defence, taxes), the right to self-government and to practise their own customary laws. As the sum of these freedoms (libertates), this settlement law—which was more favourable than the existing legal arrangements in Old Germany and the neighbouring eastern states—was designated as ius Teutonicum (in the Slavic lands) or ius hospitum (in Hungary).

The granting of these privileges was conditional upon the sovereigns granting exemption (immunitas) from the burdens and requirements of local law. By virtue of this sovereign right, their position as the largest landowners and their claim to ownership of uninhabited land, the Greifs in Pomerania, the Piasts in the Polish principalities, the Přemyslids in Bohemia and Moravia, the Arpads in Hungary, the Dukes of Styria and Carinthia, the Margraves of Carniola, and the German Order in Prussia and later in Livonia became the principal driving forces behind the land development of their territories. Owing to the low population density of their lands, they attracted German, Flemish and Walloon settlers for this purpose; alongside the aims of improving the economic structure and increasing productivity (rent-based manorialism), they also pursued, particularly in the early period, interests relating to border security and the expansion of their dominion. In this context, elements of comprehensive regional planning become apparent.

Individual early settlement advances, pushing far into border regions, forced a departure from the traditional system of broad, wooded border strips between territories. Consequently, the clearing and settlement of these areas often constituted the first stage of intensive colonisation, particularly in regions where there was a high proportion of large-scale church and noble estates alongside those belonging to the sovereign (Northern and Southern Moravia, South Bohemia, the Neisse-Ottmachau diocesan lands/Ziemia otmuchowsko-nyska in Silesia, and western Greater Poland). As the first Slavic prince outside the Empire, Duke Henry/Henryk I of Silesia (1201–1238) was the first Slavic prince outside the Empire to recruit large numbers of German peasants and townspeople, who, within a complex system, established towns serving as central hubs – functioning as the economic and legal centres of a community – as well as uniformly designed and laid-out villages in their vicinity (the ‘Weichbild’ system) in the western and south-western border regions of Lower Silesia, covering a total area of 8,000 Frankish hides. In addition to ducal settlers, he also employed monasteries and orders of knights, which were either endowed with extensive land grants or founded directly near the border. In a similar manner, before the middle of the century, the Cistercians, Premonstratensians, Templars, the Knights of St John or the German Order were active in the peripheral regions of Bohemia and Moravia, on the Pomeranian–Greater Polish and Greater Polish–Silesian borders, in the Spiš region and in Transylvania. Consequently, and above all due to its monopoly on education and welfare provision in the High Middle Ages, the Church came to play an important role in the development of the state during the 13th century. From the end of that century onwards, sovereigns only rarely (in Eastern Pomerania) called upon ecclesiastical organisations to undertake major settlement projects.

Large-scale settlement planning on the sovereign’s dominial estates (e.g. the development of the Beskid foothills under Duke Wladislaus/Władysław of Opole [1246–1281] by settlers from Lower Silesia), in some cases also with the deliberate involvement of the nobility. Thus, in western Hungary, on the disputed border with the Holy Roman Empire, the Hungarian kings granted vast tracts of land to magnates for settlement under German law, with colonists from the duchies of Austria and Styria. The Székelys, a Turkic people who had joined the Magyars at an early stage, were also settled as privileged border guards both in the west and in the east of the kingdom. Southern Lesser Poland (the Carpathian Foothills) and the adjoining eastern region of Rotreußen were developed under King Casimir III the Great/Kazimierz Wielki (1333–1370) by Silesian and Polish settlers. In parallel with the continued expansion of German-law clearing settlements in northern Ruthenia (eastern Poland) from 1370 onwards by Polish and Ukrainian colonists, settlement by Vlachs (Romanians) and Ukrainians under Wallachian law (an adaptation of German law to a pastoral-agricultural way of life).

Whilst in all these cases the colonisation proceeded peacefully as a purely settler-driven immigration or expansion on the initiative of the provincial and land-owning lords, there is a connection – as in the centuries prior in the border regions of the German Empire originally settled by Slavic populations — in the Order’s territory of Prussia, conquest, Christianisation and the development of the land were interlinked. Whilst parts of the Prussian population were annihilated, the subjugated and Christianised nobles and peasants were incorporated, together with German settlers, into the programme of land cultivation. As the German Order claimed superior ownership of the land, it was able to largely direct the settlement process, which began in the Kulm region/Ziemia Chełmińska (Kulm Charter of 1233), reached the northern edge of Pomesania by the end of the 13th century and expanded into the ‘Great Wilderness’ (later Masuria) in the 14th century. This was organised by the Order’s commanders and estate holders. In the southern parts of the region, Slavic members of the minor nobility and peasants also took part in clearing the forest during the 15th century.

The original aim of the local rulers to keep the indigenous population within the old legal and social structure was generally abandoned after a few decades. The granting of emphyteutic settlement rights (the allocation of land on a hereditary lease) to Slavic and Prussian peasants gave rise to a unified, more independent peasant class; large parts of the old settlement areas were profoundly transformed by the reorganisation of the peasant economy, the introduction of the ‘Hufen’ system, the spread of new village types and the expansion of urbanisation. In some areas, however, remnants of the pre-colonisation agricultural conditions have survived. Whilst in Pomerania and Prussia, in western Poland, Silesia and Moravia, German peasants were settled in the old settlement areas alongside local ones, they are almost entirely absent from the villages in Inner Bohemia, Central Poland and Inner Hungary that were brought under German law. The expansion of agricultural land was accompanied by an intensification and specialisation of agricultural production (‘crop specialisation’, production for the market, extending to supra-regional trade), the massive increase in which (up to 150 per cent) facilitated population growth (up to fivefold) and the development of urban centres. In the course of this intensified land development, a general expansion of the church organisation in the individual territories, a considerable increase in the number of local churches and a progressive densification of the parish network can also be observed, although the causes for this should not, of course, be sought solely in settlement under German law.

The close interconnection between rural and urban settlements is a key aspect of regional development. Only in the case of settlements arising ‘spontaneously’ can one speak of a simple transposition of the Western city as a fully-formed model; in the old market towns, on the sites of which or in the immediate vicinity of which new towns were founded, the conditions for the development of the new urban system were often already in place. In terms of quality, the towns governed by German law stood on a higher level in legal (self-government, independent jurisdiction), economic (trade privileges, craft guild privileges, local market functions) and social levels (civil liberties); in terms of settlement planning, however, they were predominantly based on the central market model (‘ring’, grid or lattice pattern). The early granting of ethnic group rights by the sovereigns to German, Romance or Jewish subjects (e.g. Duke Soběslav of Bohemia in 1176/78 for the Germans of Prague) already contained elements of later grants of municipal rights.

German settlement in the East around 1300. Scene ‘
’ from the Oldenburg illustrated manuscript ‘
’ of the ‘Sachsenspiegel’, 1336. [Oldenburg State Library
, Cim 410 l, fol. 87r,
On loan from the Lower Saxony Savings Bank Foundation
]

As a central element of the town-founding process, these often constituted a stage or the culmination of a protracted development characterised by the convergence of social structures between the established population and German immigrants; in some cases, the old market settlement, with its secular or ecclesiastical owners and their subjects, continued to exist alongside the newly founded town until the topographical and ethnic dualism was resolved through urban expansion. Legal uniformity within the individual territories was ensured by the emergence of regions governed by municipal law and the establishment of higher courts for the purpose of obtaining legal guidance: Lübeck law on the Baltic coast, Magdeburg law with its sub-forms (e.g. Kulm, Neumarkt, Leitmeritz, Olomouc law/prawo chełmińskie, średzkie; litoměřické, olomoucké právo) from Prussia to Northern Bohemia and Moravia, as well as South German laws (Nuremberg, Vienna) with sub-forms (in particular Eger, Prague and Brno law/chebské, pražské, brněnské právo) in Bohemia, Moravia and Hungary.

These were primarily driven by economic interests – mining towns (e.g. Goldberg/Złotoryja and Löwenberg/Lwówek Śląski in Silesia, Freudenthal/Bruntál, Iglau/Jihlava and Leobschütz/Głubczyce in Moravia) and major long-distance trading centres (e.g. Breslau, Poznań, Kraków) were among the earliest settlements – but national defence objectives and administrative necessities soon became significant factors in the design and expansion of the network of towns. During the most intensive phases of colonisation in the 13th century, the founding of towns was therefore almost entirely concentrated in the hands of the sovereigns; it was only at the outset, and then increasingly from the 14th century onwards, that episcopal, monastic and noble towns (particularly in Poland) emerged alongside them. The planning drive of the feudal lords is evident in numerous interventions in ecclesiastical or noble property rights, and in some cases also in compulsory exchanges or the relocation of towns. On the other hand, the close ties to the town lord prevented the emergence of free imperial cities as in Germany; a number of towns on the Baltic coast were nevertheless able to attain a certain special status through their integration into the economic and legal structures of the Hanseatic League, or, in the case of Breslau, as the seat of the provincial administration of the duchy of the same name. In the particularly densely populated region of Silesia, the average distance between towns was 14–20 km, with the majority serving as market towns for an average of 15–20 villages; by contrast, on the eastern and south-eastern periphery of East Central Europe, areas with few towns persisted due to the continued existence of markets without formal town charters.

In all the legally recognised or institutionally established towns of the 13th century, the upper class and the majority of the middle class were of German origin, with the result that German centres emerged even in areas without significant German peasant settlements (including Inner Bohemia, Central Poland and Inner Hungary, as well as Old Livonia, Southern Styria and Carniola). Among the urban lower classes, at least in the areas of old settlement, the indigenous population is likely to have been in the majority, with the result that, on occasion, social and national divisions in the late Middle Ages were mutually reinforcing.

From the 14th century onwards, a process of linguistic and social equilibrium and assimilation began, as a result of which, by the start of the modern era, the majority of Pomerania, the northern parts of Prussia, the Neumark, Silesia to the left of the Oder, the Bohemian-Moravian border regions, Upper Styria and Carinthia had become German-speaking again, with the exception of small pockets, whilst eastern Upper Silesia and southern Lesser Poland had reverted to Polish; in addition, small German-speaking enclaves (e.g. in Galicia; Iglau; Hauerland; Gottscheer Land/Kočevska in Carniola) and mixed zones characterised by bilingualism have persisted.

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