Prussian Estates - Era of Teutonic Prussia

Era of Teutonic Prussia

Originally, the Teutonic Order created the Estate to appease the local citizens, but over time the relations between the Order and the Estates grew strained, as the Order of knights treated the local population with contempt.

Different Prussian holders of the privilege of coinage (among them the Order and some cities), actually committed to issue a Prussian currency of standardised quality, had debased the coins and expanded their circulation in order to finance the wars between Poland and Teutonic Prussia. However, this expansion disturbed the equilibrium of coins circulated to the volume of contractual obligations, only coming down to a harsh depreciation of all existing nominally fixed contractual obligations by inflating all other non-fixed prices measured by these coins, ending only once the purchasing power of every extra issued coin equalled its material and production costs.

"Obligations would be retroactively changed if new coins, too plentifully issued, would be counted as equal to the old ones (1526, lines 307-310)." Thus a law was "passed by the Diet of Teutonic Prussia in 1418 (cf. Max Toeppen, 1878, 320seqq.), smartly regulating the fulfilment of old debts fixed in old currency by adding an agio when repaid by new coins." Thus creditors and recipients of nominally fixed revenues were not to lose by debasement-induced inflation.

As Prussia became increasingly tied economically and politically with Poland, and the wars became more and more devastating to the borderlands, and as the policies and attitude of the King of Poland were more liberal towards the Prussian burghers and nobility than that of the Order, the rift between the Teutonic Knights and their subjects widened.

The Estates drifted towards the Kingdom of Poland in their political alignment. Norman Housley noted that "The alienation of the Prussian Estates represented a massive political failure on the part of the Order".

At first, the estates opposed the Order passively, by denying requests for additional taxes and support in Order wars with Poland; by 1440s Prussian estates acted openly in defiance of the Teutonic Order, rebelling against the knights and siding with Poland militarily (see Lizard Union, Prussian Confederation and the Thirteen Years' War).