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This tiny private museum is devoted to the history of Potsdam's Dutch Quarters. The quarters consist of 134 red brick houses, divided into four blocks, built between 1733 and 1740 by Dutch master builder Johann Boumann. King Frederick William I of Prussia had two things in mind when he ordered the development. Foremost, the Dutch had the reputation of being Europe's most modern and industrious nation of the time and the King wanted to attract other Dutch artisans to move to his residence. The plan didn't really work out and instead Prussian and French merchants and artists moved into the Quarters.
But Frederick William I was also known as "The Soldier-King" and by building this particular kind of houses, the he created affordable living quarters for his favorite soldiers, the Potsdam Giants, an elite troop of foot soldiers with a minimum height requirement of 6'2". Dutch houses were not very wide, but relatively tall. Each house had a small quarter on the third floor and every resident was required to house one of Frederick's giants in these rooms.
for two and a half centuries, the houses were constantly occupied. The Quarters survived the battles of World War II undamaged but East Germany's post-war Communist government had neither the means to maintain the buildings nor an interest to do so. By the end of the 1970s, it almost looked as if the largest conglomeration of Dutch houses outside of Holland was soon to be lost. The museum shows a couple of pictures of the desolate state of the houses in the 1970s. We tried to match these with pictures we took in 2007.
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