Ever heard of Gdansk? What about Danzig? One is famous for being the birthplace of the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) movement in Poland, that propelled an shipyard electrician to eventual presidentship, (which reminded many why electricians, no matter how good their intentions, are best left as electricians.) The other is remembered as a "Free City" located smack in the middle of Poland, but with mostly German inhabitants, which was a quasi-independent "Free State" under the treaty of Versailles. The Germans in the 30's were bargaining for a "Danzig Corridor" cutting through Polish territory, when they decided it was too much bother, and so took all of Poland instead. And, Gdansk and Danzig are one and the same city.
The reason the city is well-known by two different names is that the Teutonic knights, (whose self-appointed task was to spread Christianity by the sword into already Christian but-not-under-German-control areas) had the entertaining habit of giving all the places they conquered German names which often had far less resemblance to the original than that shared by Gdansk and Danzig. Thus when anyone attempted to report back to the Holy Father about any abuses, the Pope could say with a straight face "the city you mention is not listed among Teutonic dominions."
When the Teutonic Knights conquered an area, they would often often enslave the people there. One handy way to do this was to collect all the millstones in the area. Then they issued a decree that all wheat grown would be sold to them (at their prices,) which they then ground and sold back to the populace, (again at their prices.) By removing the link between a people's labor and their food, they placed themselves in direct control of the subjugated people's economic and physical fate. A captured population that bordered on Germany could expect to survive about 16 years before they would die off completely from hard labor and lack of adequate nutrition. Good Christian (German) farmers would then be brought in to work the land, and this place would now be officially Christianized.
The knights ruled the area from what was at that time their headquarters - called Marienburg, or Mary's Fortress. Today it is called Malbork. It consists of a tremendously fantastically super-duper large castle made of red brick, which was built in three stages. The first area is a square construction of 3 stories (above ground) which surround a small courtyard containing a deep well. This was the original fortress, and was massive enough that Cynthia and I spent most of the day in this relatively limited area. The second area was built later, and is an expansion of the first, that encompasses it. The last addition was mainly large additional buildings not contiguous with the main structure. All of this is nestled in about 4 rings of walls and battlements and ramps and drawbridges and portcullises that can make your head spin.
An odd thing about the fortress, from a tourist's point of view, is the lack of any signs on doors indicating that their might be an exhibition worth seeing within. The result is that you wander about freely, occasionally wandering into areas obviously under repair, and out again, until you see people emerging from some unmarked door, and think to yourself "Let's give that a go." When you open the door you find yourself standing in a tiny antechamber, which has 3 doors leading off and a staircase leading up. So you try all 3 doors. Two of them are locked, and one leads into a closet. So you go up the stairs, past some more locked doors. But when you keep pushing on random doors, always expecting to wander into somebody's office, one eventually swings open, and you are in a room full of armor, swords, old cannons, or a room with great pieces of amber jewellery, boxes covered with amber that were owned by kings, pre-historic amber jewellery across the room from very modern pieces on loan from collections. Eventually you wander out again, and go back to jiggling handles on random doors until one opens under your hand, and you find yourself in the hall where the knights held meetings. The room is lined on all sides with benches, which turn into armed chairs as you move toward the head of the room. The Grand Master's chair is easy to pick out, as it is the most impressive. In the corners of the room, interrupting the continous benches, and separating the head of the room from the rest, are cabinets with demon-like half-human-half-monster creations running down the sides of the doors. The floors are tiled in patterns, and many of the tiles show dragon motifs, or knights, or heroic animals.
Every corner of the place is loaded with detail. In corridors, in the corners of windows you find small glazed mushrooms sprouting, or a dog eating a snake eating the dog worked into the base of a column, while the ceiling has paintings and the fireplace mantel shows the heathen Lithuanians getting their just deserts from the noble Teutonic knights, who have crosses upon thars.
To cut a centuries long story short, the Pope eventually came to feel that monastic states with immense temporal holdings could be competition for the Vatican's racket, (similar business model, different methods) and so over the next 3 hundred years they slowly withered away. In 1809 they ended the military chapter of their history when Napolean told them it was over. In 1929 they became a normal monastic order.
This history explains a bit why Gdansk has two crosses on its coat of arms - the crosses reflect the Teutonic knights influence on the city. The other influence was the sea, and ships. Gdansk was a major sea port throughout its various incarnations. One of the most famous sights in Gdansk is the "Crane" which was the world's largest crane for loading and unloading ships. The crane (seen in the right-hand picture below in the distance as a protruding brown structure on the left ) was powered by people inside working like hampsters on giant exercise wheels. As a human-powered dock crane, I suppose it was impressive. The guidebooks all certainly thought so. Since the crane was just around the corner and along a canal from the Long Market street, where we and our friends spent most of our time anyway, and since we discovered a coffee shop almost next to the crane in which to have daily post-breakfast-coffee-cofee, we ended up walking by and around the crane a fair bit.
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