ic order of chivalry, transferred to
the Baltic from Palestine. Koenigsberg, Dantzic, Memel, Thorn and Revel
were the centres or the advanced posts of the movement. At the end
of the reign of the grand master Winrich von Kniprode (1382) the
Germanization of the region between the Elbe and the Niemen--the
Polish province of Posen perhaps excepted--may be regarded, for all
practical purposes, as finished. The acquisition of Brandenburg by the
Hohenzollerns only solidified the conquest and guaranteed its future.
It is safe to assume that even a large share, perhaps the greater
share, of Poland itself would have been overrun in like manner but for
the Hussite wars and the Thirty Years' war. The unfortunate Peace
of Thorn (1466), whereby the lands of the Teutonic order and of the
Brethren of the Sword became--in name at least--fiefs of the Polish
crown, was due to internal dissensions among the German colonists and
also to the distractions in Bohemia.

This apparent digression was necessary to a right understanding of the
character of Berlin and its neighborhood in comparison with Vienna.
Berlin was at the start a frontier post, but, unlike Vienna, it soon
ceased to be one. Colonization and conquest left it far to the rear as
an unimportant and thoroughly German town. The border-land of language
and race was advanced from the Spree to the Niemen and Vistula. The
language of these north-eastern districts is worthy of note. The
knights of the Teutonic order were chiefly from South Germany, the
inferior colonists from Low Germany of the Elbe, Weser and Rhine.
Hence the necessity for a _lingua communis_, a mode of expression that
should adapt itself to the needs of a mixed population. The dialect
which proved itself most available was one which stood midway between
High (South) and Low (North) German, and which itself might almost
be called a linguistic compromise--namely, the Thuringian, and more
especially in its Meissen form. This "Middle German,"[1] as it was
styled, became the official language of Prussia, Silesia and the
Baltic provinces. All very marked dialectic peculiarities were
discarded one by one, until the residuum became a very homogeneous,
uniform and correct mode of conventional speech. It will not surprise
us, then, to perceive that the Curlanders, Livonians and Prussians (of
the duchies) speak at the present day a more elegant German than the
Berlinese, whose vernacular is strongly tinged with _Plattdeutsch_