The early modern state has enjoyed a remarkable research boom for several years, owing, above all, to a dual conceptual and methodical reorientation.1 First, the progressive attrition of the ‘absolutism’ model has highlighted the regional and local periphery of governance as against the central sphere. What is more, longprevailing standards of legal and constitutional history have increasingly been supplemented and challenged by praxeological approaches inspired by action theory.2 In this connection, especially for the medium-sized German territories in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, interpretations have been supported that emphasize the role of local officeholders as semi-autonomous brokers between

1 In addition to the participants at the conference I would like to thank my colleague Frank Konersmann and the members of Andreas Suter’s discussion group on early modern history at the University of Bielefeld for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.