Towns, Villages and Homes in Teutonic Territories: Settlement and Household Life

From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, the Teutonic Order governed communities in Prussia and, through its Livonian branch, parts of the eastern Baltic. In Prussia it encouraged new towns and villages while governing established communities. Charters shaped settlement, inheritance and the dues attached to household land. Surviving townhouses and excavations also reveal how residents arranged living rooms, storage and heating. Livonia had a separate administration and its own urban laws.

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Planned towns and their privileges

In Prussia, the Order founded towns as centres for trade, craft production and administration. Many had a relatively regular, rectangular street plan, and many were fortified, though not every town had walls. Towns could grow beside castles or older settlements, and a town charter might be issued while much of the site was still undeveloped. The settlements remained modest in scale: Königsberg, for example, initially occupied an area of about 500 by 200 metres.

A key legal framework was Kulm law, a form of town law adapted from Magdeburg law. On 28 December 1233, the Order granted an early version to Chełmno and Toruń. The original charter was lost after the Chełmno town hall burned in 1244; a revised charter was issued in 1251. Kulm law gave town residents defined rights, including inheritance by descendants of either sex and the right to elect a local judge. Such privileges supported settlement and local courts, but did not make these towns sovereign communes: the Order remained the territorial ruler.

Urban life also differed from town to town. Elbląg, founded with support from merchants from Lübeck, received Lübeck law rather than the more usual Magdeburg-derived rights. In Livonia, Riga law, closely connected to Lübeck law, provided a distinct urban legal framework. Prussian and Livonian towns therefore shared a role as centres of settlement and exchange, but did not all operate under the same charter.

How villages were founded and land allocated

Village settlement in Prussia was often organised through a locator, an intermediary who negotiated with the Order on behalf of a group of settlers. The agreement could set the village’s boundaries, the obligations of its inhabitants and rights such as operating a mill, brewery or tavern. The locator received a share of the land and distributed the rest among the incoming households.

Recorded estimates put a typical village’s territory at about 40 to 60 Hufen, a historical unit of agricultural land with no single modern equivalent. A settler family might receive 2 to 2.5 Hufen. The grant could be inherited, but it did not amount to unrestricted ownership: the Order retained superior rights over the land and could require payments in produce or money, or military service. Settlers could also be allowed to fish in nearby waters for their own use.

Between 1280 and 1400, estimates record the foundation of about 1,500 villages in the Order’s Prussian territory, alongside new towns and castles. Agricultural expansion involved clearing woodland and improving land for cultivation. In the Vistula delta, extensive reclamation turned wet ground into farmland. These changes created new rural settlements and enlarged the agricultural base on which households and the Order’s estates depended.

Different rights for different communities

Settlement conditions reflected differences in status and local law. German-speaking settlers were encouraged to move into Prussia, while the region was also home to Old Prussians and other Baltic peoples. After the major Prussian uprising of 1260, Old Prussian inhabitants were disadvantaged in some areas: accounts describe them as holding only one Hufe and as legally unfree. Some obtained broader rights during the fourteenth century, but legal standing continued to depend on the terms of a grant and whether a person was a free landholder or a dependent tenant.

Warmia illustrates another regional distinction. Much of this area belonged to a bishop rather than being directly governed by the Order. There, some Prussian service villages were established in exposed districts, including areas vulnerable to Lithuanian raids. Their inhabitants held relatively small plots and owed armed service and modest dues. Further from this protective zone, villages founded under Kulm law generally imposed a lighter military burden and offered broader inheritance rights, including inheritance by daughters. These arrangements show that rural households’ obligations depended not only on whether they lived in a village, but also on the authority and legal system governing it.

Homes, storage and heating

For a rural household, a land grant set the size of a holding and its dues to the territorial ruler. In a chartered town, residents used local courts and inheritance rules to manage property. The legal distinction affected what a family could pass to its children and how it answered to the Order, even when the dwelling itself does not survive.

In Toruń, the medieval street plan still contains fourteenth- and fifteenth-century townhouses alongside market squares, churches and the Order’s castle. Excavations at Puck, a smaller town in Pomerelia, reveal a different building tradition. Timber frames used upright posts and horizontal beams to carry the structure, with infill enclosing the rooms. Houses grew through rear annexes and cellars as owners needed more space. One late fourteenth-century house had two bays, with living quarters in the rear section and a masonry cellar below. Upper floors provided further space on a compact town plot.

Cooking and warmth required fixtures as well as rooms. At Puck, brick hearth floors supported the cooking area, pots could hang over the fire, and hoods or chimneys drew smoke away. Stoves assembled with ceramic pot-shaped tiles supplied heat. Cellars and rear additions offered storage alongside living space, joining household provisioning to the physical growth of the town.

Change across the later Middle Ages

Settlement patterns and household obligations developed amid political and economic change. After the Order’s defeat at Grunwald in 1410 and the wars that followed, its finances came under pressure. In Prussia, heavier demands on subjects contributed to conflicts between the Order, towns and landed groups. The Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 divided Prussian territory: the Order retained an eastern domain under the Polish Crown’s overlordship, while western lands passed to Poland. In 1525, the Prussian branch was secularised as the Duchy of Prussia. The Livonian branch continued separately until 1561. These political changes altered the authorities collecting dues and confirming local privileges.