The Prussian statesman Baron Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein (1757-1831) was the initiator and planner of the Prussian recovery after the collapse of 1806.

Baron Stein was born in Nassau on Oct. 26, 1757, the scion of an ancient knightly family. He studied at the University of Göttingen and entered the Prussian administrative service as an expert on mining in 1780. He served reliably but without extraordinary distinction in that capacity for a quarter century. Most of his service was in the detached Prussian provinces of Cleves and Jülich, a circumstance that led him to conclude that centralized absolutism of the sort that characterized most 18th-century states could not be made to work very well. In 1804 he was appointed minister of commerce but was dismissed after 2 years by Frederick William III for insisting too stridently on administrative reform.

Stein retired to his residence at Nassau and...