A classic proponent of the trans-European Economic Enlightenment, the Oekonomische Gesellschaft Bern, founded in 1759, strove to optimize the use of the region’s resources in order to protect the sovereignty of the state of Bern. Its significance should not be measured according to its immediate practical effects, but rather in view of how its ideas for new forms of scientifically based natural resource usage unfolded over the long term.