Old Prussians
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- "Prussians" redirects here. "Prussians" may also refer to citizens of the former German state of Prussia.
The Old Prussians or Baltic Prussians (German: Pruzzen or Prußen; Latin: Pruteni; Lithuanian: Prūsai; Polish: Prusowie) were an ethnic group consisting of medieval Baltic tribes inhabiting the lands of the southeastern Baltic Sea, roughly around the Vistula and Curonian Lagoons. During the 13th century the Old Prussians were conquered by the proselytizing crusaders of the Teutonic Knights and gradually Germanized and Polonized over the following centuries. The former state of Prussia took its name from the Baltic Prussians, although that state was led by Germans, not by the extinct Old Prussians.
The land of the Old Prussians approximately consisted of central and southern East Prussia, or the present-day Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland, the Kaliningrad Oblast in Russia, and the Klaipėda Region in Lithuania.
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[edit] Etymology
Most names of the Prussian tribes were formed on the common theme of landscape. Such names were based on water; an understandable convention in a land dotted with thousands of lakes, streams, and swamps (see Masurian Lakeland). Indeed, that landscape caused the very partial isolation that preserved the Baltic language group. To the south, the terrain runs into the Pripet Marshes at the headwaters of the Dnieper River. They have been an effective barrier over the millennia.
The original pre-Baltic settlers generally named their settlements after the streams, lakes, seas, or forests by which they settled. The clan or tribal polities into which they were organized took the name of the settlement. For example, Barta, the home of the Barti, is related to some other Baltic water names, such as the Bartis River in Lithuania, and to such words as Albanian berrak and Bulgarian bara, "swamp". A *bor- root can be reconstructed, meaning "swamp", which ought to come from the o-grade of Indo-European *bher-; Indo-European has several *bher- roots, however, so the exact meaning and line of descent is unclear.
This root is perhaps the one used in Prusas (Prussia), for which an earlier Brus- is found in the map of the Bavarian Geographer. The name of the Dnieper in ancient Greek was the Borysthenes, which, though undoubtedly twisted, contains perhaps the *Bor-. In Tacitus' Germania, the Lugii Buri are mentioned living within the eastern range of the Germans. Lugi can descend from Pokorny's *leug- (2), "black, swamp" (Page 686), while Buri is perhaps the "Prussian" root.
Pameddi (Pomesania) is derived from the words for "by", "near", and "honey", and can be traced to the Proto-Indo-European root *medhu-. Nadruvia has been variously hypothesised to come from the words na ("by", "on") and dravis ("wood"); and na, by, on and the root *dhreu-, "flow", or "river". It is related to the Old Prussian Nadyn, forest; Nede, a pond; and the Nydar, Lithuanian Nedejan, Russian Nadva (reconstructed Baltic *Nadva), a tributary of the Dnieper. There is also obvious relation to latvian language which is one of the two survived baltic languages. In Latvia is the river Bārta too. And if we look at the "Pameddi" we see "pa" which is "by" and "medi" which means "honeys". "Nadruvia" in latvians' way sounds "Nodruve" - "no" is "by" or "from" and "druva" is "cornfield".
The contexts for these elements remain unknown, or whether these Buri were the ancestors of our Prussians. The second-century AD geographer, Claudius Ptolemy, lists some Borusci living in European Sarmatia (Eighth Map of Europe), which was separated from Germania by the Vistula Flumen. His map is very confused in that region, but these Borusci seem further east than our Prussians, which would have been under the Gythones (Goths) at the mouth of the Vistula. The Aesti (Easterners) as they were recorded by Tacitus were recorded later by Jordanes as part of the Gothic empire.
[edit] Early history
At the beginning of Baltic history, the Old Prussians were bordered by the Vistula and the Neman Rivers with a southern depth to about Toruń, which was Prussian, and the line of the River Narew. The Kashubians were on the west, the Poles on the south, the Sudovians on the east, the Curonians on the north, and the Lithuanians on the northeast. The Sudovians began at about Suwałki.
The Prussians, like the other Balts of the times, were organized into a tribal structure. This structure is most fully attested in the Chronicon terrae Prussiae of Peter of Dusburg, a priest of the Teutonic Order. The work is dated to 1326. He lists eleven lands and ten tribes, which were named on a geographical basis. These were :
- Pomesania (German Pomesanien, modern Lithuanian Pamede, with the reconstructed Prussian name Pameddi)
- Varmia (German Ermland or Warmien, modern Lithuanian Varme, with the reconstructed Prussian name Wārmi)
- Pogesania (German Pogesanien, modern Lithuanian Pagude, with the reconstructed Prussian name Paguddi)
- Natangia (German Natangen, modern Lithuanian Notanga, see Notangians)
- Sambia (German Samland, modern Lithuanian Semba, see Sambians)
- Nadruvia (German Nadrauen, modern Lithuanian Nadruva, see Nadruvians)
- Bartia (German Barten, modern Lithuanian Barta, with the reconstructed Prussian name Barta, see Bartians)
- Skalovia (German Schalauen, modern Lithuanian Skalva, see Skalvians)
- Sudovia (German Sudauen, modern Lithuanian Suduva, with the reconstructed Prussian name Sūdawa, see Sudovians)
- Galindia (German Galindien, modern Lithuanian Galinda, with the reconstructed Prussian name Galinda, see Galindae)
Peter noted that the eleventh land, Kulm, to the southwest of Pomesania, was nearly uninhabited. After the German conquest of Prussia, the country was divided along almost these exact lines, although the Germans added a twelfth land which they called Sassen, centred at Tannenberg. Those names are not, perhaps, exhaustive. Many of the names appear in ancient and medieval sources, but the spelling and to some degree the morphology vary. Peter of Dusburg preferred Latin names, such as the Pomesani, Pogesani, Varmienses, etc.
[edit] Medieval history
The first definite mention of the Old Prussians in historical sources is in connection with Adalbert of Prague, who was slain in 997 during a missionary effort to Christianise the Prussians. Because the pagan Old Prussians came into conflict with Roman Catholic Poland, Duke Konrad I of Masovia sought external help in the 1220s. Although the Old Prussians repelled the Order of Dobrzyń, they succumbed to the Teutonic Knights after a bloody conquest spanning several decades in the 13th century during the Northern Crusades. Many of the native Prussians who survived were resettled in Sambia. Frequent revolts, including a major rebellion in 1286, were defeated by the crusaders.
Baptised Prussians were educated at the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, while Germans and Dutch settlers colonized the lands of the aboriginal Old Prussians; Poles and Lithuanians also settled in southern and eastern Prussia, respectively. Significant pockets of Old Prussians were left in a matrix of Germans in what is now the Kaliningrad Oblast, and remained part of the monastic state of the Teutonic Knights until 1525. They were gradually Germanized or Polonized, depending on which part of Prussia they lived in, especially beginning in the 15th century.
The monks and scholars of the Teutonic Order took a great interest in the language spoken by the Prussians, and tried to record it. In addition, the missionaries needed to communicate with the Prussians in order to convert them. Consequently, there are some records of the Old Prussian language; along with the slightly known Galindian and the better-known Sudovian, these records are all that remain of the West Baltic language group. As might be expected, it is a very archaic Baltic, showing affinities with Proto-Germanic. The Old Prussian language seems to support the theory that a common Germanic/Balto/Slavic language once existed[citation needed].
The Teutonic Order was gradually defeated by the Polish-Lithuanian Union during the 15th century. In 1525 Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach secularized the Order's Prussian territories into the Protestant Duchy of Prussia, a vassal of Poland. The Old Prussians rose again in rebellion, but were defeated by the German authorities. During the Protestant Reformation, Lutheranism spread throughout the territories, officially in the Duchy of Prussia and unofficially in the Polish province of Royal Prussia, while Catholicism survived in Warmia. With Protestantism came the use of the vernacular in church services instead of Latin; Albert had the Catechisms translated into the Old Prussian language.
Because of the assimilation of the Old Prussians by Germans, Poles, and Lithuanians, the Old Prussian language became extinct before the end of the 17th century, but Bibles and poetry were written in the language beforehand.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- 1584 Map showing Altes Preussenland Old Prussia
- Northeast Prussia
- Milestones of Baltic Prussian History
- Map of Prussia before Teutonic Order invasion
