=The Beginning of State Control in Prussia.=--We may look first at Germany. Up to the later years of the eighteenth century all stages of education in the various German states remained almost entirely under ecclesiastical control, but during this period the schools and universities were taken over by the state from the church, although the clergy still exercised a few prerogatives, and centralized national systems were gradually organized. Among these states of Germany the first and most influential in the organization of universal education was Prussia. While each of the others is characterized by an educational history and peculiarities of its own, this state may be taken as an illustration of the evolution of German school systems. The rise of Prussia, educationally as well as politically, seems to have been due to the strong Hohenzollern monarchs,--despotic, but thoroughly awake to the interests of their people. Although for nearly two centuries state control of education was carried on more or less through the medium of the church, its development was well under way by the seventeenth century. While the ‘consistory,’ or board of supervision, was still composed largely of the clergy, the schools were soon (1687) declared not to be simply church organizations, but to belong to the state, and some attempt was made to extend schools to the villages as well as cities. But the first noteworthy attempt to establish compulsory attendance occurred during the reign of Frederick William I. In 1717 that monarch decreed that, wherever schools existed, children should be required to attend during the winter, and in the summer whenever they could be spared by their parents, which must be at least once a week. He also founded the first teachers’ seminary at Stettin from his own private means (1735), and the next year had a definite law passed, making education compulsory for children from six to twelve years of age. [Sidenote: (2) _General School Regulations_ decreed by Frederick in 1763,] [Sidenote: supplemented by _Regulations for Catholic Schools_;]