Lesson 4
Reformed Confessionalisation in Germany and Upper Germany
   (Print) (Debate plattforrm)

1. Introduction
2. Martin Bucer and Strasbourg
3. Johannes a Lasco and East Friesland
4. The counties of Bentheim, Steinfurt and Tecklenburg
5. Lingen
6. Lippe
7. Rhineland and the Lower Rhine Valley
8. The Wetterau Association of Counts (Wittgenstein, Nassau-Dillenburg-Siegen, Wied)
9. Hessen-Cassel
10. The Electoral Palatinate and Baden
11. East Germany
12. Huguenots in Germany
13. Literature

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 By this, the Edict of Nantes was superseded and Protestantism in France was forbidden under threat of death.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.