 Samuel Pufendorf was born on January 8, 1632 in Dorfchemnitz, a small town southwest of Chemnitz in Saxony. The region’s Protestant elector, Johann Georg, had just been compelled by the Imperial Edict of Restitution (1629), and by Tilly’s sack of Magdeburg (1631), to abandon his neutral stance in the Thirty Years War and join the newly arrived (1630) Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus in an anti-Habsburg alliance. This, and his return to the Imperial fold in 1635, exposed his territories to previously avoided predations that would influence the young Pufendorf’s outlook on the Empire, religion, and political power – if not also the human condition more generally. Samuel’s father, Esaias Pufendorf, assumed the Lutheran pastorate at nearby Flöha in 1633, and it was there a few years later that the family experienced first-hand the terrors of the war (Döring 1996a). There were ten children beside Samuel, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Of these he was the second youngest of four brothers, some three years behind Esaias (1628–1687), who would become one of Europe’s most accomplished diplomats and remained, as well, Samuel’s lifelong confidant and benefactor (Bérenger 1993, Fiedler 2003). The dedication in Pufendorf’s Select Academic Dissertations (DAS 1675b) acknowledges the debt.