Weber district
The Weberviertel originally developed around Weberplatz in Potsdam-Babelsberg , Brandenburg , is a testimony to the history of the Bohemian Protestants .
History and architecture
In 1750, Frederick II gave the order to build the Weber Quarter. The execution was under the command of Colonel Wolf Friedrich von Retzow . Frederick II wanted to bring new settlers into the war and plague- torn country. He granted the Bohemian Protestants freedom from taxes and religion, and each was given a small weaver's house with a small piece of land measuring 75 meters long and 27.5 meters wide.
The Weberviertel was created in 1751 north of Neuendorf between two royal highways, the Königsweg to Berlin and the Allee to Glienicke, which converge at a 45 ° angle. The Bohemian weavers called it Nowawes (Bohemian translation of Neuendorf) in 1752 . The first numerous small weavers' houses were built in the form of a street village on both sides of today's Rudolf-Breitscheid-Straße and Benzstraße.
The weaver houses are mostly five-axis and were inhabited by two families. The front door was in the middle. There were two windows to the left and right of it. The room on the street side was mostly used as a living room and study. There was often a large loom in it. In the back room was the parents' bedroom. Children and servants slept under the roof. The kitchen was in the hallway under the stairs. It was used by both families and, as it had no window, it was also called the black kitchen . In exceptional cases, the kitchen was on the courtyard side and therefore had daylight, which is why these kitchens were called “white kitchens”.
A walnut tree had to be planted in the adjacent courtyard . The residents could use the nuts for their own consumption, but they had to deliver the wood to the Ochsenkopf rifle factory in Potsdam .
In early 1770, Frederick II gave the order to plant mulberry trees for silkworm breeding . Various plantations were created around the Weberviertel. In the heyday there were over 3000 such trees there, but it only took a few years, then the population had shrunk to about 300 trees. Today you can still find a mulberry tree on the corner of Weberplatz.
104 weaver houses and gardens have been preserved, including the "Nowaweser Weberstube", in which a mechanical loom and documents on the life and work of weavers as well as information on the development of the Babelsberg district up to 1930 are on display.
Weberplatz
On the triangular Weberplatz stands the Friedrichskirche , built by Jan Bouman in 1752/1753 for the weavers . At first there were services alternately in Bohemian and German; later the bohemian church services were abolished. The Bohemian brothers, who had to leave their Bohemian homeland because of the Counter-Reformation , traced their community back to Jan Hus . Your last bishop was Johann Amos Comenius (1592-1670).
Web links
- Nowawes a Frederician colony (potsdam.de)
- GS / NIK: data and facts. Green despite a huge construction program . Potsdam latest news . Retrieved March 14, 2019.