Gorsky \u2026<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWhat are G\u00f3rski's statements from which this image of the Teutonic Knights as "Hitler's great-grandfathers" arose? The author, in the introduction, argued that the state created by the Teutonics in Prussia was comparable to that founded by the Jesuits in the 1600s in Paraguay. In both cases there would be the fact that men, who renounced the world on principle, turned to it again to found states, mostly by violence. Furthermore. both in Prussia and in Paraguay, the Polish historian pointed out, \u201cthe dominant monastic corporation was recruited from outside the country and therefore constituted a sort of caste closed towards the natives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Teutonic Knights only very rarely welcomed the descendants of German nobles who settled in Prussia; just as the order of Malta was closed to the nobles of the island, unless they were born outside its possessions, and the Jesuits of Paraguay, exclusively European. they didn't even accept guaranis as coadjutors. Natives were admitted into all these state organizations only in subordinate functions."<\/p>\n\n\n\n
G\u00f3rski later explained, responding to the criticisms of a German scholar, Udo Arnold: \u201cthe fundamental sense of my book, which was the fruit of over 40 years of research and reflection, is contained in the thesis that the Teutonic Order, as an ecclesiastical corporation consecrated to asceticism and mysticism does not have the right to create a state. This thesis comes ex definition from the Teutonic Order. The ideology of every Christian order consists in the renunciation of earthly goods, and among them the exercise of state powers. This emerges from the evangelical text which narrates the temptation of Jesus and his refusal to assume powers over states (Matt. 4, 8-11). [...] If you want to found a state you have to take on all the consequences that derive from this decision, even invasion wars and crimes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Gorski. the Teutonic Order is thus identical with the state he created in Prussia. A negative judgment on this State therefore implies an identical evaluation of the religious-military Order of the Teutonic Order. It should also be noted that for the Polish scholar the religious component of the Order is irrelevant. In fact, according to him, by the time the Order was founded, at the end of the 12th century, the idea of the crusade would have already been in decline.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nTherefore the birth of the Teutonic Order would not be due "to a persistence in Germany of the idea of crusade", but rather "to political calculations, in particular of the Hohenstaufen in Sicily, who sought to exert their influence in the Levant". G\u00f3rski therefore clearly contests any religious motivation in the origins of the Order: "If at the beginning of the Teutonic Order there were a spark of purely religious inspiration, it would be possible to follow its development even in the course of the bloody history of this religious order , who was looking for a country to conquer and a state to found".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Significant, for G\u00f3rski's negative vision of the Teutonic Order, is the obscure image that he traces of the great master Ermanno di Salza (1209-1239), tireless mediator between Frederick and the popes, under whom the expansion of the The Teutonic Order in Eastern Europe. According to the Polish historian, Ermanno originally from a family of ministeriales, i.e. knights-servants who had won their freedom, would have been driven by an irrepressible personal ambition to obtain for the Order he led a territory in which to establish a State, which would allow him to become prince10. For the Polish historian, Ermanno's work "was that of a politician, and none of his most important actions was that of a religious". \u201cHe was undoubtedly a great man who died in Salerno in 1239 and was buried in Barletta in the chapel of the Order. He had given Germany a new province, launching his own Hospitaller order in the wake of the Empire. Having to choose between two notions of Christianity at the time at war with each other, the Empire and the papacy, he had preferred the first, i.e. a decidedly political rather than a religious conception. The choice of means had proved to be consistent with this approach: it had deceived the prince of Masovia. while the bishop of Prussia had been left in captivity; he had not shied away from resorting to false documents. For a monk, that was no small feat."<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The negative image of the Teutonic Order that emerges from G\u00f3rski's book must be seen in the context of the Polish historiographical tradition, but the echo it aroused in Italy, where the history of the Teutonic Order was associated with that of Prussia and Nazism, was certainly influenced by a factor unrelated to the work of the Polish historian. We are talking about the film "Alexander Nevsky" 11 (1938) by the Soviet director Sergej M. Ejzenslejn (Eisenstein) in which the Teutonic knights are presented as the champions of the Germanic world as opposed to the Slavic world, with a clear allusion to the threat of Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the seventies of the twentieth century, however, a slow and gradual revision of the opposing historiographical positions between German and Polish historians began, which had still been reaffirmed in the reaction that G\u00f3rski's book had aroused in Germany and in the Polish historian's reply to the criticisms by German.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
French revision<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nIndeed, on the one hand, we find texts in which the negative stereotype of the Teutonics is overcome. For example, the book by a French author, non-specialist on the subject, Henry Bogdan. of 1995 (translated into Italian in 1998). in which a positive judgment is expressed on the history of the Order: "As in all social groups, even among the Teutonic Knights there were some black sheep who forgot the vows they had pronounced, but overall, the vast majority of this cavalry elite remained faithful, for more than eight centuries, to the mission that had been established by the founders of the Order in the XII century, both in the Holy Land and in the Baltic world, when they defended Western Christendom in the face of its enemies, and in our days , placing himself at the service of the poor and dispossessed, thus fulfilling the traditional obligations of chivalry, servitum et aiixilium.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n\n
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