ABSTRACT
The original boundaries of the old German kingdom were formed by the Elbe and the Saale. The German state had always claimed overlordship over its Wendish neighbours beyond the Elbe and Saale. There had been no lack of attempts to draw these peoples into closer union with the Empire. The means for this lay in the Christian mission. Germany’s enemies had a winning game in the time of the struggle for the throne between Staufen and Guelph. The middle ages, that is, the whole period up to the discovery of the new routes over the ocean, had only two main arteries of world trade. One route lay across the Mediterranean, the other through the Baltic into the North Sea. The effects of German colonization were by no means confined to the limits of the territory actually won for the Empire. They extended far beyond this, throughout Poland and Galicia and down to the Ukraine and Roumania.
