Edict of Potsdam

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.

[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.

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.

Kein Neid ward wach, Nicht Eifersucht, - man öffnete die Thür Und hieß als Glaubensbrüder uns willkommen...... Encouraged by the French theologian-philosopher Jakob Abbadie, on 29 October 1685, Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg issued the Edict of Potsdam.

[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 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.

[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.

[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.

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.