ABSTRACT
The modern professional public service is to a large extent a German invention. Its emergence in the eighteenth century is associated in particular with the consolidation of the Prussian State. Here an administrative service was developed, designed not merely for the maintenance of law and order, but also for the management of important aspects of social and economic life. In the encouragement of agriculture and forestry just as in the establishment of a national system of education the Prussian State took initiatives which were unknown in the laisser-faire climate of Great Britain. For such purposes a bureaucracy was required which even in the second half of the eighteenth century had some of the characteristics of contemporary professional Civil Services. There was emphasis on professional skill and competence, recognition of the desirability of securing officials with technical qualifications appropriate to their functions, and an effort to develop a coherent administrative organization reaching to all parts of the State.
