Teutonic Knights were focused on the Holy Land more than on the Baltic while the crusades in outremer still lasted. Their headquarters were at Acre until it fell at 1291, then they moved them to Venice until 1309 because Venice was the main port for crusaders to go to Holy Land.
https://twitter.com/APLasbleiz/status/1462949892939202562
It was only after 1309 that they moved the headquarters to Marienburg in the Baltic when the project of the crusades in the Holy Land was definitely over for good and when they saw what happened to Templars.
They went to the Baltic after being invited by the Poles and were in Transylvania fighting against the Cumans before that. Later on Baltic became a popular destination for crusaders because it was close to Western Europe. It was never meant to be the main goal of their order.
The reason why they established their state in Prussia where they had arrived in 1226 is because they didn't want the situation from Transylvania to repeat itself where they successfully fought against the Cumans and built fortresses but were soon expelled by local nobility.
So when they arrived to the Baltic they forced a guarantee that whatever they conquered from the pagans would be their territory, and ultimately built their own monastic state there. But the Order was focused on crusading elsewhere all the while.
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