The Hohenzollern and the nobility.--Prussian reform movements before 1806.--Calvinism and raison d'etat in early seventeenth-century Brandenburg.--The formation of states and constitutional development.--Military organization and the organization of the state.--The origins of the modern ministerial system.--The commissary and his significance in general administrative history.--The preconditions of representative government in the context of world history.--The individualist and the collective approach to history.--Troeltsch and the problems of historicism.--Economics and politics in the age of modern capitalism.