I start from a standard Malthusian model of population, vital rates and the real wage and implement it using data for Germany and applying time
series models. This yields a stylized picture of the trajectory of the German economy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. I then
add evidence from other research to discuss the likely forces that drove the German economy during the period under study. A combination of
endogenous mechanisms highlighted by Unified Growth Theory and exogenous shocks related to market integration and institutional change, which extended the potential for Smithian growth, account for the gradual development the German economy out of Malthusian stagnation from the second half of the seventeenth century onwards.