In 1727 Friedrich Wilhelm I decreed that a chair for ‘Oeconomie, Policey and Kammer-Sachen’ be established at the University of Halle; shortly after, a further chair was founded at the University of Frankfurt on the Oder. This marked the formal inauguration of courses of study for future state officials, and hence of the formation of ‘Kameral- und Polizeiwissenschaften’. In the previous century a series of texts had appeared – among them von Seckendorf's Teutscher Fürsten-Stat (1656), Becher's Politische Discurs (1668) and von Schröder's Fürstliche Schatz- und Rentenkammer (1686) – which were composed for the rulers of the Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire. These seventeenth-century advisory tracts set up a relationship between the interests of a ruler and the welfare of his subjects, arguing that if a ruler wished to secure his power, then he should first attend to the welfare of his subjects. In the early eighteenth century this idea was transferred to the lectureroom, and made the basis of the new cameralistic sciences.