The
Edict of Potsdam was a proclamation issued by
Frederick William, Elector of BrandenburgFrederick William was the Elector of Brandenburg and the Duke of Prussia from 1640 until his death. He was of the House of Hohenzollern and is popularly known as the Great Elector because of his military and political skill...
, in
PotsdamPotsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and is part of the Metropolitan area of Berlin/Brandenburg. It is situated on the River Havel, some 25 kilometres southwest of the centre of Berlin....
on October 29, 1685, as a response to the revocation of the
Edict of NantesThe Edict of Nantes was issued on April 13, 1598. by Henry IV of France to grant the Calvinist Protestants of France substantial rights in a nation still considered essentially Catholic...
by the
Edict of FontainebleauThe Edict of Fontainebleau was an edict issued by Louis XIV of France, also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1598, which had granted to the Huguenots the right to practice their religion without persecution from the state...
.
Background
In October 1685, King Louis XIV of France issued the Edict of Fontainebleu, which was part of a program of persecution that closed
HuguenotThe Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Since the eighteenth century, Huguenots have been commonly designated "French Protestants", the title being suggested by their German co-religionists or "Calvinists"...
churches and schools. This policy escalated the harassment of religious minorities since the
dragonnadeA policy, commonly called in French "dragonnades", was instituted by Louis XIV in 1681 in order to intimidate Huguenot families into either leaving France or reconverting to Roman Catholicism....
s created in 1681 in order to intimidate Huguenots into
convertingReligious conversion is the adoption of new religious beliefs that differ from the convert's previous beliefs. It involves a new religious identity, or a change from one religious identity to another. Conversion requires internalization of the new belief system...
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.
Terms
On October 29, 1685,
Frederick William, Elector of BrandenburgFrederick William was the Elector of Brandenburg and the Duke of Prussia from 1640 until his death. He was of the House of Hohenzollern and is popularly known as the Great Elector because of his military and political skill...
issued the
Edict of Potsdam, which encouraged oppressed Huguenots to immigrate to his nation by offering them numerous benefits. The edict gave
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
Protestants safe passage to
Brandenburg-PrussiaBrandenburg-Prussia was a German monarchy established by the personal union between the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1618.The monarchy was ruled by the branch of the Hohenzollern dynasty that had earlier ruled Brandenburg...
, offered them tax-free status for ten years, and allowed them to hold
church servicesIn the Protestant denominations of Christianity, a service of worship is a meeting whose primary purpose is the worship of God. The phrase is normally shortened to service. It is also commonly called a worship service...
in their native
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
. As a result, Potsdam became a center of European immigration, its religious freedom attracting not only French Protestants but also the persecuted of
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, the Netherlands, and
BohemiaBohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands, currently the Czech Republic...
. Thus, the immigrants to the Electorate of Brandenburg stabilized and greatly improved the country's economy following the destructive religious wars that had swept through
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
in the seventeenth-century.