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see Konrad von Wallenrode for the historical Grandmaster of the Teutonic Knights

Konrad Wallenrod is an 1828 narrative poem by Adam Mickiewicz, set in 14th-century Lithuania. Mickiewicz wrote this shortly before the Polish uprising of 1830 against their Russian overlords.

The patriotic poem tells the fictional story of Walter, a Prussian, who sought refuge in Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where he was reared among the people's mortal enemies, the Order of Teutonic Knights, who becomes the order's Grand Master by impersonating a Teutonic Knight Konrad Wallenrod and deliberately leads the Knights to military disaster. Bound by patriotic dictates (of which he has been reminded by an old bard named Wernyhora) and nurtured on imperatives of vengeance, Wallenrod faces a tragic choice; shorn of love and honor, he ends in suicide.

Konrad Wallenrod has twice been made into an opera: as I Lituani (The Lithuanians), by Italian composer Amilcare Ponchielli (1874); and as Konrad Wallenrod, by Polish composer Władysław Żeleński (1885). It is said that the Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin based his musical composition Ballade No.1 in G minor on this poem.

The concept of "Wallenrodism" (Polish: "Wallenrodyzm"), and certain powerful fragments of the narrative poem, have become an enduring part of the Polish national consciousness and found resonance in the Polish uprisings of the 19th and 20th centuries.

[edit] See also

• Romanticism in Poland
• Konrad von Wallenrode
• List of Poles
• 1828 in poetry