Grand master of the Teutonic Order (1414-1422) during a critical period of the order’s history.
Kuchmeister was born into a MeiCen-Silesian ministerial family; his early career in the order is obscure. From 1396 he held different offices in Prussia. In 1411 he became marshal after most of the order’s high officers had died in battle against the Poles at Tannenberg. He opposed the warlike policy of Grand Master Heinrich von Plauen, who was deposed by Kuchmeister and the other high officers in October 1413. Subsequently, on 9 January 1414, Kuchmeister was elected grand master. Immediately he tried to establish peaceful relations with Poland, but a truce was only concluded after Prussia had been ravaged by Polish troops in 1414. Attempts to settle the conflict with Poland at the Council of Konstanz failed. The truce was renewed six times up to the end of Kuch-meister’s mastership, but no permanent peace was made.
Kuchmeister’s struggles to consolidate Prussia economically and politically brought little success, and he had to make many concessions to the Prussian estates. On 10 March 1422 he resigned because of illness, and perhaps also because of personal frustration. Kuchmeister died in Danzig (mod. Gdansk, Poland) on 15 December 1423. He was buried in the chapel of St. Anne at Marienburg castle (mod. Mal-bork, Poland).
-Axel Ehlers
Bibliography
Jahnig, Bernhart, “Michael Kuchmeister,” in Die Hochmeister des Deutschen Ordens, 1190-1994, ed. Udo Arnold (Marburg: Elwert, 1998), pp. 119-122.
Nobel, Wilhelm, Michael Kuchmeister: Hochmeister des Deutschen Ordens, 1414-1422 (Bad Godesberg: Wissenschaftliches Archiv, 1969).
Urban, William, Tannenberg and After: Lithuania, Poland, and the Teutonic Order in Search of Immortality (Chicago: Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 1999).
World History
