This study focuses on the political thinking and activities pursued by the leadership of the Teutonic Order following its defeat by a Polish–Lithuanian force at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1410 to the Treaty of Melno in 1422, which saw the grandmaster of the Order renounce all claims to Lithuanian territory. Guiding the author’s framing throughout is the concept of “Handlungsspielräume,” best understood in English as “room for maneuver” or, perhaps more colloquially, as “wriggle room.” The concept of “Handlungsspielräume” surfaced in German historical scholarship about 15 years ago, encouraging a holistic assessment of the world view, situation, and resources, of say, a king or queen, a prince or lord, or a the ruling clique of a city, to evaluate and better contextualize their wielding of power, their decision-making, and their success (or not) in achieving their aims, however far the latter can be discerned.

Noting it is “in fashion” right now (14), Homann applies the concept of “Handlungsspielräume” to a challenging and demanding decade for the Order, that saw recurring conflict with Poland and Lithuania amidst splits within internal leadership and shifting regional alliances, international debates questioning the legitimacy of the Order’s mission and holding of lands along the Baltic littoral, and economic and financial dislocation in the Order’s heartlands. After an introduction, ten wide-ranging chapters focus on different facets of the Order’s political relationships and activity. This includes lengthy sections on the Order’s participation in the general ecclesiastical Council of Constance (1414–1418), on the relationships of successive grandmasters of the Order with Sigismund of Luxemburg, the Holy Roman Emperor-elect, and with the Hanseatic League, alongside comparatively shorter sections divided geographically, focused on England, France, and Burgundy, Poland–Lithuania, and Denmark and Pomerania.

Homann tackles a convoluted and often confusing 1410s and early 1420s for the Order with skill and nuance, with an impressive geographical scope stretching from western Spain to Russia and from London to Rome that does justice to the international significance of the Teutonic Order in the early fifteenth century. This volume benefits from the author's close reading of the still largely unpublished materials in the Order’s letter and parchment collections, which, when placed alongside the already rich seams of published source material, shed new light on internal debates and discussions in detail not generally seen in narratives of this period. The back-and-forth between Sigismund and the Order's leadership in the 1410s as the latter negotiated for military aid against Poland are given fresh details in chapter 2, from Sigismund's casual and surely unredeemable offer to send a force of “1000 lances” to invade Poland, to an unhelpful letter pointing out the obvious from an Order's officer, telling the grandmaster that he “only” needed to find a mere 10,000 Rhenish Gulden (a significant sum at the time) to fund a mercenary army that would help him crush the Poles (176). Money and the Order’s lack of it recurs throughout the volume, with Homann noting how one of the Order’s officials reported the dire state of the finances in the Order’s base in Vienna with tears in their eyes to a senior commander when they visited in 1420.

Homann’s analysis rightly points out that it was not always lack of money, imagination, and steadfast allies that made the 1410s so difficult, for sometimes the grandmasters just spent too long ruminating over their options, without pursuing any of them. When a Galician ship set upon by German raiders off the Flemish coast limped inconveniently into a Prussian port, risking dragging the Order into an international crisis, the grandmaster eventually agreed to offer the ship and its crew safe harbor, arrange for stolen goods to be returned, and then offer the beleaguered ship an escort to ensure its safe onward passage. By the time this had all been agreed, however, the Galician ship had fallen into distress at sea and suffered further fatalities, a situation the grandmaster then compounded by withdrawing his offer of safe escort for reasons that remain unclear. The grandmaster’s behavior roused the ire of Flemish leaders in Bruges, angry at what they saw as inaction to right a wrong perpetrated by Germans off their coast, who then threatened to seize Prussian goods in Flanders as punishment. This then annoyed the grandmaster’s German allies in Bruges, frustrated that a delicate situation had been handled so indelicately. Having “Handlungsspielräume” was one thing, but making use of them was sometimes beyond the Order’s leadership.

While reading through the chapters, the present reviewer felt, however, that the concept of “Handlungsspielräume” was not as illuminating as the introduction suggested it might be. Come the volume’s final section, it appears that the author remains unconvinced too, with Homann concluding that “Handlungsspielräume” remains difficult to fix precisely in his chosen context and remains, in some cases, “an analytical fuzz” (“eine analytische Unschärfe”) (519). Homann’s well researched and clearly presented chapters usually end up depicting the Order’s grandmaster or leadership in a position where they had little or no “Handlungsspielräume” anyway, were in serious quandaries with no discernible exit strategy, or just spent too long talking, letting opportunities slip by. Not for nothing did the Order's chief diplomat at the Council of Constance write bluntly in 1417, after lamenting the lack of communication from his senior leaders and his own financial woes, that “we do not know where we stand” (294).

Homann’s chosen lens of “Handlungsspielräume” does little, therefore, to shift the historiographical consensus dating back decades, namely that the leaders of the Order were, put simply, thrust into difficult situations throughout the 1410s, and that the grandmasters themselves were often poorly suited in intellect and vision to exercise their office in a difficult and rapidly changing environment. But Homann’s work remains valuable, providing fresh perspectives on the internal thinking and politicking of a late medieval polity that knew it was in a proverbial hole and that collectively invested much thought (albeit with often little action) into trying to dig itself out of it. That the grandmasters and their colleagues enjoyed little success does not make following Homann’s narrative and analysis any less engaging.