A Slavic people related to the Wends living near the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, in northeast Germany and northwest Poland, from the early centuries AD before becoming extinct or being assimilated into other ethnic groups by about 1500.
The Obodrits were involved in wars (800-1200) with Danish kings seeking supremacy in the Baltic area. In the meantime, German missionaries had converted them to Christianity.
The German poet Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826) born in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, liked to identify himself as an Obodrit to emphasize his Slavic heritage. Obodrits were sufficiently remote and obscure to appeal to the nascent ethnic identifications of Romanticism.
