Prussian Socialism Episode 50: The Ostsiedlung: Medieval German Conquest and Settlement in the Baltic, Bohemia and the Balkans

From the drippy forests of Thuringia to the lake-riddled swampland of Lithuania...

The lolling hills of Silesia to the harsh, alpine peaks of Transylvania...

Central Europe was invaded, peopled and organized from the West. Between 1150 and 1400 German farmers, merchants, warriors and holymen flooded across the Elbe and down the Danube in the first great European age of exploration. There they encountered Slavs, Hungarians, and Balts... peoples sometimes thirsty for Western tech and trade, sometimes eager to defend their ways of life and national honor.

This great folk-movement, the Ostsiedlung (Settling of the East), is almost unknown in the English-speaking world. The standard textbooks might make passing mention of "German immigrants", but nowhere in English will you find a comprehensive and fair treatment of this immense and history-shaping venture.

Nowhere, that is, except on Prussian Socialism... join Greg Conte in this lecture as he uncovers the Ostsiedlung. From the Teutonic Knights and the Siebenbürgen Saxons to the last doomed days of Kurland and Bohemia 1945... was it a peaceful movement dedicated to agricultural progress, the spread of Christianity and the organizing of sophisticated government? Or merciless exploitation and subjugation?

Progress or tyranny, life or death, German or Slav?

------------------------
DO YOU WANT TO LEARN more about the PRACTICAL APPLICATION of National Socialism TODAY? Read my latest book Be a Hero: Revolution by Legal Means, one of the MOST BANNED books ever! Unfortunately, because it is so banned, you can only pay for a physical copy with check, crypto or cash. Credit card processing and money order are impossible.
https://www.invisibleempirepublishing.com/books-2/be-a-hero-revolution-by-legal-means/

HOWEVER, you can get the ebook version with credit card through google books
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Gregory_Conte_Be_a_Hero?id=OKh9EQAAQBAJ

INTERESTED IN GERMAN? Check out my German language learning book SIEG HEIL: German for Beginners, available only from Invisible Empire Publishing.
https://www.invisibleempirepublishing.com/books-2/german-for-beginners-by-gregory-conte/

------------------------
Books mentioned in the lecture:
Higounet, Charles, Die Deutsche Ostsiedlung im Mittelalter, originally: Les Allemands en Europe centrale et orientale au Moyen âge (best scholarly work available)
Reimers, Erich Der Kampf um den Deutschen Osten (popular work representing German attitude in 1942)

Urban, William, The Teutonic Knights a Military History (meh)
Urban, William, The Baltic Crusade (pretty good)
Urban, William, The Teutonic Knights Strike East (exciting)

Wilson, Peter H., Heart of Europe (suitable for info-mining)
Putzger, Friedrich Wilhelm Historischer Schul-Atlas (outstanding maps)
Nash, E. Gee The Hansa (readable, light)
Franzel, Emil Sudetendeutsche Geschichte (quite good)

Ewald, Albert Ludwig, Die Eroberung Preußens durch die Deutschen 1872 (didn’t read but looks legit)
Voigt, Johannes, Geschichte Preußens 1827 (said to be out-of-date but no one has bothered replacing it)

Barraclough, Geoffrey The Origins of Modern Germany (Caution: extremely boring and badly focused)
Christiansen, Erich The Northern Crusades (Caution: cooly deliberate in its attempts to defy the reader’s understanding).