The Edict of Potsdam (German : Edikt von Potsdam) was a proclamation issued by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, in Potsdam on 29 October 1685, as a response to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the Edict of Fontainebleau. It encouraged Protestants to relocate to Brandenburg.
On 22 October 1685, King Louis XIV of France issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which was part of a program of persecution that closed Huguenot churches and schools. This policy escalated the harassment of religious minorities since the dragonnades were created in 1681 in order to intimidate Huguenots into converting to Catholicism. As a result, a large number of Protestants — estimates range from 210,000 to 900,000 — left France over the next two decades.
Across the Rhine it has been estimated that the Holy Roman empire had lost a third of its population through slaughter, famine and plague during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). [1] The western part of Brandenburg-Prussia fell within the empire: badly depopulated, the territory faced a desperate labour shortage during the second half of the seventeenth century.
The novelist Theodor Fontane was descended from French religious refugees who had relocated to Brandenburg-Prussia in response to the Edicts of Fontainbleau and Potsdam. Two hundred years later, he wrote a lengthy and resounding
"Prologue to the two hundredth anniversary celebration of the French colony":A shelter found, freedom of [religious] belief,
And refuge from oppression of the conscience.
A courageous prince, free and devout,
Received us here, as he prince of the country
Received us as his own people. No envy was awakened,
No jealousy, - People opened their doors
And welcomed us as Brothers in Christ......
Ein Obdach fanden, Freistatt für den Glauben,
Und Zuflucht vor Bedrängnis der Gewissen.
Ein hochmuther Fürst, so frei wie fromm,
Empfing uns hier, und wie der Fürst des Landes
Empfing uns auch sein Volk. Kein Neid ward wach,
Nicht Eifersucht, - man öffnete die Thür
Und hieß als Glaubensbrüder uns willkommen......
Theodor Fontane, 1885,' [2]
Encouraged by the French theologian-philosopher Jakob Abbadie, on 29 October 1685, Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg issued the Edict of Potsdam.
A large number of religious refugees had arrived by ship at Cadzand and other coastal ports in the Netherlands. [1] The edict, which reflected a hands-on practical approach by the Prussian leadership, provided for Prussian diplomats in Amsterdam to arrange ships to transport these by sea to the Free City of Hamburg where Prussian representatives would be on hand to arrange transport up the Elbe to their chosen destinations in the Brandenburg-Prussia heartland. [3] For people fleeing from eastern and southern France provision was made for a land route via Sedan and the Duchy of Cleves, which had become a territory of Brandenburg-Prussia in 1666, and where the Great Elector (as the Prussian ruler is identified in English language history books) had arranged for them to be settled locally or transported on via the Rhine to new homes further east. [3] In its third section the edict spelled out a succession of suggested places where the migrants might wish to live, and went on to promise "free choice [as to] their place of settlement... wherever they find it most convenient to practice their professions and trades". [3]
The edict expressly ruled out any customs duties or other taxes on assets that the migrants were able to bring along with them. [3] Migrants would be accommodated in abandoned and dilapidated properties which their owners had lacked the means to make habitable. [3] They would receive their properties free of mortgages or other debts or obligations, and they would be provided at no cost to themselves with the necessary timber and other building materials. Any former proprietors would be compensated for the transfer value of properties allocated to the migrants, and the new settlers would enjoy a six-year tax holiday in respect of any property taxes (though they would remain subject to the same taxes on consumption as other citizens). [3]
In some of the many places where tracts of abandoned cultivable land had been identified, the elector's edict provided for the perpetual freehold of these to be allocated to his "French Protestant Comrades in Belief" ("Evangelisch-Reformirten Glaubens-Genossen"), free of mortgages or other encumbrances. Materials would be provided for refugee farmers to bring their land into cultivation and construct homes. A ten-year tax holiday was included in the package. The edict also recorded that in affected localities officials had been mandated to hire town houses where Huguenot refugees might be received and accommodated with their families rent free for up to four years while arrangements for them to create their own farms were put in place, although this generous provision was expressly conditional on beneficiaries subsequently bringing their farms into production. [3]
It was spelled out that as soon as a French Protestant migrant family had settled in a town or village they should enjoy full legal and civic equality with the elector's existing subjects. Significantly, they would not be subjected to any discriminatory so-called "Droit d’Aubaine" or other burden with which foreign immigrants in other kingdoms, states and republics would be encumbered. [3] Migrants were permitted to hold church services in their native French language [4] and to set up their own schools. [1]
The elector moved fast. On 9 November 1685 translations of the Edict were printed in German, French and Dutch. [1] These were quickly distributed to the affected areas in France using secret couriers and local Protestant networks. [1]
It is estimated that approximately 20,000 Huguenot refugees relocated to Brandenburg-Prussia in response to the Edict of Potsdam. [1] The contrast between the generosity of the Prussian ruler's Edict of Potsdam and the vindictiveness of the self-styled "Sun king's" Edict of Fontainebleau was conscious and widely remarked. [1] The embryonic state became a center of European immigration, its religious freedom attracting not only French Protestants but also the persecuted of Russia, the Netherlands, and Bohemia. Thus, the immigrants to the Electorate of Brandenburg stabilized and greatly improved the country's economy following the destructive wars that had swept through Europe in the seventeenth-century.
The Edict of Potsdam was not a product of mere altruism or publicity-seeking on the part of an ambitious German prince. A large immigrant community personally linked to the ruler by their religious beliefs also strengthened the ruler's own position in relation to the landed nobility and the powerful Lutheran interests. [5] In a north German state with only limited access to natural resources, there was also a compelling economic case to be made for returning to productive usage land which had been abandoned since the Thirty Years' War. [1]
A particularly well documented case is that of the farmer Jean Harlan, based in Calais and barely 20 years old when the Edict of Fontainbleau was proclaimed in 1685. With others, he escaped in a boat along the English Channel, traveling as far as Cadzand on the Dutch coast. In one of the several "transit" points set up by Prussian officials in the Netherlands, he was provided with financial support and documentation, before moving on to Uckermark, close to the Oder River. Here he met and in February 1689 married Marie Le Jeune, another Huguenot refugee who had managed to escape from France with her three children. In Uckermark they were allocated an empty farmstead, together with building material, seed corn, two horses, a cow, and 50 Thalers. Uckermark was a particular focus of Huguenot resettlement. The farmstead was one of 2,900 available for settlement in the area, where the package including "two horses, a cow, and 50 Thalers" was apparently the standard one. The Harlans were able to benefit from the grants and tax privileges provided by the Edict of Potsdam, and Jean Harlan later went on to build a business as a tobacco merchant. His son, Jakob Harlan, subsequently founded a commercial dynasty of upwardly mobile business people. [1]
Charles Ancillon was a French jurist and diplomat.
Frederick William was Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, thus ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia, from 1640 until his death in 1688. A member of the House of Hohenzollern, he is popularly known as "the Great Elector" because of his military and political achievements. Frederick William was a staunch pillar of the Calvinist faith, associated with the rising commercial class. He saw the importance of trade and promoted it vigorously. His shrewd domestic reforms gave Prussia a strong position in the post-Westphalian political order of Northern-Central Europe, setting Prussia up for elevation from duchy to kingdom, achieved under his son and successor.
Frederick William I, known as the Soldier King, was King in Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1713 till his death in 1740, as well as Prince of Neuchâtel.
Potsdam is the capital and largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of Berlin, and lies embedded in a hilly morainic landscape dotted with many lakes, around 20 of which are located within Potsdam's city limits. It lies some 25 kilometres southwest of Berlin's city centre. The name of the city and of many of its boroughs are of Slavic origin.
The Edict of Nantes was signed in April 1598 by King Henry IV and granted the minority Calvinist Protestants of France, also known as Huguenots, substantial rights in the nation, which was predominantly Catholic.
The Huguenots were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Besançon Hugues (1491–1532), was in common use by the mid-16th century. Huguenot was frequently used in reference to those of the Reformed Church of France from the time of the Protestant Reformation. By contrast, the Protestant populations of eastern France, in Alsace, Moselle, and Montbéliard, were mainly Lutherans.
Brandenburg-Prussia is the historiographic denomination for the early modern realm of the Brandenburgian Hohenzollerns between 1618 and 1701. Based in the Electorate of Brandenburg, the main branch of the Hohenzollern intermarried with the branch ruling the Duchy of Prussia, and secured succession upon the latter's extinction in the male line in 1618. Another consequence of intermarriage was the incorporation of the lower Rhenish principalities of Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg after the Treaty of Xanten in 1614.
The Edict of Fontainebleau was an edict issued by French King Louis XIV and is also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Edict of Nantes (1598) had granted Huguenots the right to practice their religion without state persecution. Protestants had lost their independence in places of refuge under Cardinal Richelieu on account of their supposed insubordination, but they continued to live in comparative security and political contentment. From the outset, religious toleration in France had been a royal, rather than popular, policy.
An edict of toleration is a declaration, made by a government or ruler, and states that members of a given religion will not suffer religious persecution for engaging in their traditions' practices. Edicts may imply tacit acceptance of a state religion.
Prussia was a German state located on most of the North European Plain, also occupying southern and eastern regions. It formed the German Empire when it united the German states in 1871. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, expanding its size with the Prussian Army. Prussia, with its capital at Königsberg and then, when it became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany.
The Dragonnades were a French government policy instituted by King Louis XIV in 1681 to intimidate Huguenot (Protestant) families into converting to Catholicism. This involved the billeting of ill-disciplined dragoons in Protestant households with implied permission to abuse the inhabitants and destroy or steal their possessions. The soldiers employed in this role were satirized as "missionary dragoons".
Lehnin Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery in Lehnin in Brandenburg, Germany. Founded in 1180 and secularized during the Protestant Reformation in 1542, it has accommodated the Luise-Henrietten-Stift, a Protestant deaconesses' house since 1911. The foundation of the monastery in the newly established Margraviate of Brandenburg was an important step in the high medieval German Ostsiedlung; today the extended Romanesque and Gothic brickstone buildings, largely restored in the 1870s, are a significant part of Brandenburg's cultural heritage.
The Margraviate of Brandenburg was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806 that played a pivotal role in the history of Germany and Central Europe.
Cadzand is a village in the Dutch province of Zeeland. It is located in the municipality of Sluis, about 8 km northwest of Oostburg. The village contains 790 inhabitants (2010). Better known to many visitors is the nearby beach at Cadzand-Bad.
Joachim Ernst von Grumbkow was a general and statesman of Brandenburg-Prussia.
The Uckermark is a historical region in northeastern Germany, which currently straddles the Uckermark District of Brandenburg and the Vorpommern-Greifswald District of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Its traditional capital is Prenzlau.
Prussian virtues are the virtues associated with the historical Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918). They were derived from Prussia's militarism and the ethical code of the Prussian Army as well as from bourgeois values such as honesty and frugality that were influenced by Pietism and the Enlightenment. The so-called "German virtues" that include punctuality, order, and diligence can also be traced back to Prussian virtues.
Bechly is a surname.
The French Colony of Magdeburg was a separate and independent community that existed from 1685 to 1808 in the city of Magdeburg. It co-existed, without any clear boundaries, with the citizens of the city and with the somewhat later colony of German Palatines. Its residents were Huguenot refugees, under the protection of the Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia. The colony had its own church, town hall, mayor, court and even its own home guard, and spoke French every day in all of them and on its streets.
Jean de Forcade de Biaix, aka Jean de Forcade, Marquis de Biaix, aka Jean-Quirin de Forcade de Biaix, aka Jean Quérin von Forcade, Herr von Biaix, aka Johann Querin de Forcade, Herr zu Biaix, aka Johann Quirin von Forkade de Biaix, was a Huguenot, a descendant of the noble family of Forcade and Lieutenant General in the service of the Kingdom of Prussia. He was the Regimentschef of the 23rd Prussian Infantry Regiment, Commandant of the Royal Residence in Berlin, Gouverneur militaire of Berlin, a Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle a member of King Frederick I of Prussia's "Tobacco Collegium". and president of the Grand Directoire 1718–1729, the deliberative and decision-making body responsible for all Huguenot affairs in the kingdom.
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