Shortly after the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, pious Hanseatic burghers gave what until then had been the House of the Germans under the Knights Hospitaller its very own hospital to run during the siege to recover Acre, which was won in 1191. The following year, perhaps in recognition of their efforts, the Pope issued the German monk-soldiers their own charter, as the Order of the House of Saint Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem. We know them as the Teutonic Knights.
The Teutonic Order always felt ill at ease in this grand and rich new capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In bustling Acre, the lingua franca was, well, French. Sure, the Pisans had their own harbor, and the Venetians and the Genoese their own sovereign enclaves, but the kings and bishops of Acre were largely Frankish, as were the leaders of the supposedly brotherly Hospitaller and Templar Orders. And so the Germans built their own castle, to hold its archives, its library, and its treasury up in the mountains, miles away. They called it Starkenberg, but the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was not to be written in German, so everyone calls it today by its literal French translation, Montfort.
Montfort was lost to the Egyptian Mamluks in 1271, and abandoned since.
Montfort of the Galilee. Beyond the mountains, the coast of Achzib, the old Phoenician port city, and the shimmering Mediterranean. Leica Typ 114, 5:57 PM, 14 February 2017