Cameralism and Physiocracy as the Two Sides of a Coin: Example of the Economic Policy of Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer

Johann Friedrich v. Pfeiffer, born in 1718 in Berlin, was the son of an official of the royal administration of state property [Domänenverwaltung]. His honorary title is controversial. Pfeiffer first served as a soldier and then took on different positions within the Prussian cameralistic administration. He rose to the position of a privy councilor [geheimer Rat]. From 1747 to 1750 he organized the settlement of smallholders and the construction of 150 villages in the Kurmark, also founding an iron factory there. He quit his Prussian position and lived in different German territories, temporarily working for different electors [Kurfürsten] and also traveling to Switzerland, Austria, and England. In 1768 he worked as a director of a company which carbonized coal in Austria but the enterprise failed just like a second attempt in 1776. In 1778 he founded a starch manufactory in Hanau with a similar result. In 1781 he fled to Offenbach because of alleged difficulties with a mistress. Nevertheless, the University of Mainz offered him a professorship for cameralistic sciences in spite of his advanced age of 64 years and despite him being of Protestant confession. The dissolution of three monasteries or convents and the assignment of their possessions to the University then allowed introduction of the study of cameralism which had already been in the making for 20 years. Pfeiffer was the founding ­professor [Gründungsprofessor], at first without any relationship to the traditional faculties, and from 1784 on being the first and only professor of the independent faculty of cameralistic sciences. Pfeiffer died in Mainz at the age of 69 on March 5th, 1787 (Napp-Zinn 1955, 19–22; Wilhelm 1995, 225).