Pomerania, a collective term used to refer…
1260 CE
Pomerania, a collective term used to refer to the three regions of Hither Pomerania, Farther Pomerania, and Pomerelia, is located on the south coast of the Baltic Sea, divided today between Germany in the west and Poland in the east by the Polish-German border.
In the mid-first millennium, large parts of the indigenous population, who were Germanic Goths and Rugians, had departed south for engagement by and with the Roman Empire, while Slavs moved into the region to settle and spread their culture, thereby shifting Pomerania’s identity from Germanic to Slavic.
The Slavs have diverged into several small tribes referred to as Baltic Wends.
At the beginning of the second millennium, Christian Piast Poland, Denmark and the German Holy Roman Empire had begun to incorporate pagan Pomeranian territories into their expanding feudal states.
After all Slavic Pomeranian tribes had lost their independence in late twelfth century, local dukes had called in German settlers to resettle areas devastated in the wars, to populate and cultivate formerly uninhabitable areas, mostly consisting of large woodlands separating former Slavic dwellings, to found cities and—as the result of and the reason for all of this—pay taxes.