The site of the cavalry battle, one of the largest in the whole Middle Ages, was actually the heath between the villages of Tannenberg and neighboring Grünfelde (now, Grunwald), mentioned by King Władysław as "loco conflictus nostri ... dicto Grunenvelt".

[3] After the subsequent Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466), it became a part of Poland as a fief held by the Teutonic Knights until 1525,[4] and by secular Ducal Prussia afterwards, following the Prussian Homage.

In 1914 during World War I the German Army under the command of General Paul von Hindenburg won an important victory over the Russian Imperial forces invading East Prussia in the Battle of Tannenberg.

It was, however, named after nearby Tannenberg by the victorious Germans at Hindenburg's request, for propaganda purposes and to cast it as a kind of revenge for the medieval defeat.

After the German defeat in 1945, Stębark with Masuria became again part of Poland according to the Potsdam Agreement, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the 1980s.