Prussian

The German-speaking Prussian society took shape after the Teutonic Order's Prussian Crusade, launched in the 1230s, broke the resistance of the pagan Old Prussians, a Baltic people. Under the Order, the Ostsiedlung brought German settlers. Middle Low German served urban law, Hanseatic commerce and administration; the native Prussians were gradually assimilated and their Baltic language died out in the early eighteenth century.

Defeat at Grunwald in 1410 began the Order's decline. The Thirteen Years' War ended with the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466, placing Danzig and western Prussia under the Polish Crown as Royal Prussia and leaving the Order's remaining state a Polish fief. In 1525 Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg secularised it into the Lutheran Duchy of Prussia.

The Hohenzollern electors of Brandenburg inherited the duchy in 1618, and crowned themselves kings in Prussia at Königsberg in 1701.