Absolutely Pietist

The Prussian army chaplaincy was transformed from a disorganized, unofficial apparatus into a bureaucratized, centralized, and hierarchical state organ as part of the collaboration between August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) and King Friedrich Wilhelm I (1688–1740), but it was the Pietists who were the driving force behind these institutionalizations, not the monarchy. Francke and his allies created a state organ as a new power base and means of accessing Friedrich Wilhelm in order to check their various opponents at court, to further expand their own patronage system in Prussia, and even to sabotage the Soldier King’s own religious policies.