The Baltic Germans (German: Deutsch-Balten, or Baltendeutsche) were mostly ethnically German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today form the countries of Estonia and Latvia. (Lithuania, now considered a Baltic state, followed a completely different historical path and some of its cities were home to a small German trading class, but never a German noble or ruling class.) The Baltic German population never made up more than 10% of the total.