Description

The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem was founded in Holy Land during the XII century with the mission of helping pilgrims visiting Outremer and establishing hospitals.

Since the beginning, the order’s interests and expansion plans were more aimed to Northeastern Europe than to Holy Land. One of the earliest and more famous Grandmasters, Hermann von Salza launched a crusade against the Prussians already in 1230. Since then, their involvement in the Baltic area grew continuously.

On early XV century, the order started to see a decline as a power in the area. With the Christianization of Lithuania, its main purpose in Europe disappeared and also, on 1410, its defeat on the Battle of Tannenberg at the hands of a Polish and Lithuanian army was a severe blow to its aspirations. In spite of it, as they had grown as a feudal and commercial power, they still kept a mighty presence until the next century.

Our figure depicts a Teutonic knight in the last era of splendour for the order. He wears a state of the art harness that has nothing to envy to the ones used in Western Europe. The figure can be painted to depict a wide array of subjects from the period.