In German-speaking territory, the word for local authorities and officials, Behörden, appears in its modern sense toward the end of the 17th century. It reflected the growing institutionalization of government business, for which the state constructed an administrative apparatus constantly growing in size and complexity in the early modern period. With the rise of this apparatus, authority and the administration of government were separated from the person of the prince; the administrative apparatus gradually took on a life of its own and gave the incipient territorial stat…