Brethren of the Sword became--in name at least--fiefs of the Polish
crown, was due to internal dissensions among the German colonists and
also to the distractions in Bohemia.

This apparent digression was necessary to a right understanding of the
character of Berlin and its neighborhood in comparison with Vienna.
Berlin was at the start a frontier post, but, unlike Vienna, it soon
ceased to be one. Colonization and conquest left it far to the rear as
an unimportant and thoroughly German town. The border-land of language
and race was advanced from the Spree to the Niemen and Vistula. The
language of these north-eastern districts is worthy of note. The
knights of the Teutonic order were chiefly from South Germany, the
inferior colonists from Low Germany of the Elbe, Weser and Rhine.
Hence the necessity for a _lingua communis_, a mode of expression that
should adapt itself to the needs of a mixed population. The dialect
which proved itself most available was one which stood midway between
High (South) and Low (North) German, and which itself might almost
be called a linguistic compromise--namely, the Thuringian, and more
especially in its Meissen form. This "Middle German,"[1] as it was
styled, became the official language of Prussia, Silesia and the
Baltic provinces. All very marked dialectic peculiarities were
discarded one by one, until the residuum became a very homogeneous,
uniform and correct mode of conventional speech. It will not surprise
us, then, to perceive that the Curlanders, Livonians and Prussians (of
the duchies) speak at the present day a more elegant German than the
Berlinese, whose vernacular is strongly tinged with _Plattdeutsch_
forms from the lower Elbe. A similar phenomenon is to be observed in
our own country. We Americans, taken as a nation, speak a more correct
English--i.e., an English freer from dialectic peculiarities--than the
English themselves. We have but one conventional form of expression