13. Huguenots in Germany
The Edict of Nantes of 1598 had given the Protestant Christians
in France the possibility of becoming established after the Huguenot war. King
Louis XIV, whose conversion was expected by a large number of the Huguenots,
not least because he was a rival of the Pope, had no understanding for the
Huguenots, despite their declarations of loyalty. The coexistence of two confessions
was in his eyes a threat to the unity of France. So under his rule, the persecution
of the Huguenots started first, which culminated in the Edict of Fontainebleau
of 1685. By this, the Edict of Nantes was superseded and Protestantism in France
was forbidden under threat of death.
The result was a tremendous movement of flight. More than 250,000 people fled
from France in the direction of the West and the North, the main site of transit
being Frankfurt. Many French Reformed moved to the Swiss Confederation, Great
Britain, the Netherlands and even the USA. In Germany, the main places that
were ready for admission were Brandenburg-Prussia, Hesse-Cassel, the Rhine-Main
region, the Electoral Palatinate and Franconia. The motivation for admission
of Reformed refugees was many-layered. There was the solidarity with those
of related confession. Added to this was also an economical concern to repopulate
the regions that had to some extent bled to death after the Thirty Years’ War.
The fleeing Huguenots were mostly salesmen and craftsmen. Already in the autumn
of 1685, Elector Frederick William passed the so-called Edict of Potsdam, which
guaranteed the Huguenots freedom of settlement and other privileges. Roughly
20,000 followed this invitation and settled above all in Potsdam, Berlin and
the Uckermark. In Hesse-Cassel, roughly 3,500 Refugies (so the self-designation
of the Huguenots) found a new home, primarily in Cassel and North of it. Bad
Karlshafen was a new Huguenot establishment.
Hugenottenmuseum
In Bad Karlshafen today, there is the Huguenot museum and the German Huguenot Association has its headquarters there. In Franken, it was Margrave Christian Ernest who brought about the new settlement of Huguenots and thus an economical upturn – Erlangen is basically a Huguenot establishment (of 1686). As a consequence of the admission in individual territories, French-Reformed congregations arose in many other towns as well, e.g. in Hamburg, Celle, Hanover, Hameln, Leipzig and Stuttgart.
Bartholomäusschlacht
Many congregations in several German regional churches are still able to look back to a Huguenot tradition today, e.g. in the Protestant Reformed Church (Synod of the Protestant Reformed churches in Bavaria and North West Germany), in the Protestant Church of Berlin-Brandenburg, the Protestant Church of Electoral Hesse and Waldeck and the Protestant Church of the Palatinate.