In Prussia, which was virtually untouched by the commercial revolution which transformed western Europe, the traditional elite was the Junker aristocracy which had its origins in the crusading order of the Teutonic Knights who conquered the northeastern Baltic region in the early thirteenth century. This clerical-military order was organized according to the principle of blind obedience of the leader or Führer. Prussia ultimately became secularized and acquired the superficial appearance of feudal states in the west, but without the concept of rights as well as obligations secured through a mutually binding contract among freemen.