ABSTRACT
The most important influence on German education in the years between about 1530 and 1740 was the Reformation, and even during the late eighteenth century many schools and institutions continued to give priority to the teaching of religion over other subjects. The Lutheran reformer laid particular stress on the need for an educated clergy. The demands of the territorial rulers on the better endowed and educated among their subjects brought about a further important change in the character of the German university in the second half of the seventeenth century. The lack of suitable facilities for those destined to rule was a matter which preoccupied philosophers and educationalists in the seventeenth century. In the Rhineland the Jesuits had begun to introduce primary schooling for all classes in the mid seventeenth century. The essential difference between these academies and the old grammar schools and universities lay in the curriculum.
