Holy Roman Empire / Germany: Notable Groups, Organizations, and Movements

1190 - Teutonic Knights (All Facts)

• Established for the defense of the Holy Land

• In 1230, they were invited into Prussia in the Holy Roman Empire to help with forcible conversion of the Prussians and Yatvags

• In 1242, they were defeated by Alexander Nevsky in the Novgorod Russians in the Battle of Lake Peipus / Battle on the Ice during the Northern Crusades, thus ending the Northern Crusades in Russia

1200s - 1500s - Beguines (All Facts)

• Religious lay order of women best known as “beggars” who served their communities by begging (some worked as textile workers)

• Communities of single women over thirty who chose to live together in peace and prayer

• They were easily identifiable by the black dresses and white veils that they worse

• They were committed to stay in the namesake place for six years after one year of initiation

• They were characterized by a theological independence demonstrated by their translations of the Bible and at their strict meetings

  • This worried the catholic establishment in France, Germany, and Belgium

• The Bishop of Mainz in Germany

  • initiated the second Church crackdown on the activities of the namesake group

  • accused them of being idle, gossiping vagabonds who refused to obey men under the pretext that God is best served in freedom

  • excommunicated the namesake beggars

  • threatened to evict the namesake beggars from their parishes

1200s - 1600s - Hanseatic League (All Facts)

• It was a medieval commercial and defensive network of merchant guilds and market towns in Central and Northern Europe that began as a collection of loosely associated groups of German traders and towns aiming to expand their commercial interests, including protection against robbery

  • The namesake German towns that formed the namesake association did so to protect their established trading network along the coasts of northern Europe from London in the West to Novgorod in the East, having become the most important commercial and military power for Germany at the time

• Trading Association which was extended by German merchants since the 1100s when they first established a colony at Wisby on the island of Gotland

  • From there, the namesake association, in the form of Wisby, became a link between Western and Eastern Europe in which it traded with Novgorod, the Slavs, Finland, and Flanders

  • It brought Eastern Europeans cloths, salt, and beer

  • It brought Western Europeans furs, hides, wax, and amber

• Trading Association which was firmly established at Lubeck

  • This was the focal point of Baltic commerce, Hamburg and Bremen, serving the North Sea and North Atlantic, and at Flanders, dealing with the river-borne commerce of northern Europe

  • It grew to include London and Bergen (in Norway) in its trading network, which was fast-growing

• Trading Association that allowed competition, but imposed severe penalties on any member that violated a common decision

• Trading Association which reached its peak in the commercial industry of fishing during the late 1200s and early 1300s, catching up to 13K tons of herring annually

• Trading Association which

  • grew increasingly politically powerful by the 1340s

  • re-established its trading rights with

    • Novgorod after a 4-year commercial blockade of the city in 1392

    • Flanders after an embargo on trade there in 1392 by Philip the Bold of Burgundy renewing their privileges

1246 - 1878 - Welser Family (All Facts)

• Notable banking family in Germany / the Holy Roman Empire

  • They were second-rate rivals to the Fugger Family

• They were bankers to the Habsburgs and were financiers of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

• They controlled large sectors of the European economy, and accumulated enormous wealth through trade and the German colonization of the Americas, including the slave trade

1388 - 1798 - University of Cologne (All Facts)

• School which had a large Dominican presence at once point

1507 - 1806 - Fugger Family (All Facts)

• Notable banking family in Germany / the Holy Roman Empire

  • While they acquired far greater wealth than the Medici Family in Italy, they did not have as much political and cultural influence over Europe as the Medici family had

• They obtained a monopoly on silver and copper mines in Tyrol and throughout much of eastern Europe

• They acquired the right to

  • mine silver in the Tyrol from Sigismund of Tyrol

  • mint papal currency during the papacy of Pope Julius II

    • They were asked by Pope Julius II to sell indulgences to finance the work on St. Peter’s Basilica

  • control the biggest trade network on the European continent

• They helped get Charles V elected as Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany

  • Their money essentially bought King Charles of Spain the Holy Roman emperorship for himself

  • In exchange, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V gave them the right to exploit Silver and Mercury deposits in his colonies in Central America (as Charles was already the ruler of the Spanish Empire and its Central American colonies)

• They were strictly entrepreneurial, and often vied with their chief rivals, the Welser Family over exploitation in the Americas, with their agents acting more like conquistadores than businessmen