The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger

by Greg Steinmetz

  Fugger continued to work every angle to reclaim his mines. He reached out to Zápolya, sending him a diamond ring and extending greetings to his wife and daughter. Recognizing his own unpopularity, he tried to shift blame away from himself by fingering Alexi Thurzo as the engineer of the currency debasement. In November, imperial representatives joined with councilors from Bavaria and Palatinate in Buda to negotiate with Louis. They hoped for compromise. Louis refused to yield.

  Süleyman the Magnificent, the sultan of Turkey, was in his pleasure gardens in Adrianople when he got word of trouble back home. Süleyman’s elite fighters, the Janissaries, had revolted. The revolt strengthened Fugger’s hand.

  Süleyman was the most feared man in Europe. The great grandson of Mehmed II the Conqueror, the sultan who took Constantinople, Süleyman was determined to extend his reach into the heart of Europe. In 1521, 300,000 of Süleyman’s men had marched on the once-invincible citadel Belgrade, a fortress Mehmed himself had failed to take. Süleyman won it after a seven-day siege. The victory gave Turkey control of Hungary’s southern flank. Süleyman only stopped there because of distractions elsewhere in the vast Ottoman Empire. Then came Pavia and Charles’s stunning capture of King Francis. Süleyman now faced in Charles V a man as powerful as himself. From the time that Mehmed took Constantinople, popes had been calling for a crusade to win it back. The kings of Europe were individually too weak and divided to answer the call. Charles was the first one strong enough to fight the sultan on his own.

  The Janissaries were children of Christian slaves, raised as soldiers. The sultan paid them in war loot. If there was no war, there was no pay. Tradition promised them a major campaign—one offering abundant opportunity for plunder—every three years. They demanded Süleyman attack Charles before Charles attacked them. They wanted a quick strike on Buda followed by a march on Vienna. When Süleyman dashed off to Adrianople to think about it, the Janissaries lost patience and rebelled. Adrianople, near the Greek border, had a harem, cedar groves and hunting grounds caressed by a gentle breeze. It was the sultan’s favorite place on earth. But after the Janissaries revolted, he had no time for pleasure. He rushed back to Constantinople where he executed the Janissary leader but promised to attack Buda.

  Louis desperately needed money to build his defenses. With his biggest source of funding—the copper mines—in shambles, he blinked and offered to give Fugger back his concessions in return for a loan of 150,000 florins. Fugger wasn’t willing to compromise. He demanded Louis make good on all the metal he had stolen from Fugger’s warehouses and pay the costs for bringing the mines back to order. Fugger told Louis he wasn’t picky about the form of payment. Cash, silk, land or jewels would do just so long as they made him whole. He also demanded more privileges. The mining rights, he pointed out, barely covered the costs. Louis would have to offer him more—another mine, some land or a tariff reduction—if he wanted a loan. Louis thought Fugger asked too much. Despite the advancing Turks, he gambled that he could survive without Fugger. He rejected Fugger’s offer.

  The letters, contracts and ledgers that make up Fugger’s historical trail reveal much about Fugger’s commercial activities but little about his personal relationships. We think he and his wife had a frosty relationship, but we don’t know for sure. We know Fugger could be jovial with customers and hard on his nephews. But we only know pieces of the story. One of these pieces, however, is revealing; it involves Johannes Zink, Fugger’s one-time man in Rome. An incident that took place about the time of Fugger’s fight with King Louis shows Fugger to be inflexible if not heartless.

  After Fugger sent his nephew Anton to Rome to replace Zink, Zink returned to Augsburg ill and in debt. There was no reason for him to have money troubles. Not only had Fugger paid him handsomely, but Zink, through a mix of purchases and bribes, had acquired enough church offices to make himself rich. But Zink was never satisfied. Wanting to become even richer, he often borrowed money and inevitably lost it in failed schemes.

  As the crisis in Hungary raged, Zink’s family begged Fugger to see Zink before it was too late. Maybe Fugger felt sentimental toward Zink and wanted to say good-bye. Or maybe he wanted to extract some final intelligence about Rome. In any case, Fugger appeared at Zink’s bedside and Zink asked him for help. He told Fugger that his family would lose everything if he died before paying off his debts.

  Fugger himself was Zink’s biggest creditor. Instead of directly asking Fugger to cancel his obligations, Zink took his house key and tried to force it into Fugger’s hand. The meaning would have been clear to contemporaries. If Fugger accepted the keys, he accepted Zink’s obligations. Fugger brushed off the keys with such warmth and friendliness that Zink died believing Fugger would protect his interests. Zink’s family was shocked when, shortly after Zink died, a bailiff showed up demanding immediate payment of the debt. The Zinks had no income other than what came in from a single church office owned by Zink’s son. The matter went to court and the court ruled in Fugger’s favor. Fugger confiscated the claim to the church office and presumably resold it. Fugger may have genuinely liked Zink. But a deal was a deal.

  12

  THE DRUMS GO SILENT

  On a December morning in 1525, a small crowd gathered in the chapel in the Fugger Palace and waited for the news. The group included Fugger’s nephews, two notaries and some nonfamily members that served as witnesses. Fugger, now deathly ill, was resting in a room next door. After everyone arrived, a door opened and a servant wheeled him in. One of the notaries looked down at words written on paper. Fugger had revised his will and the notary was about to read it. He was about to inform the audience how Fugger had divided the world’s greatest fortune. Christmas was three days away. For some, it was coming early.

  This was the second draft of the will. Fugger had written the first one four years earlier at the time of Worms. He was feeling his age when the diet convened and had sent his nephew Ulrich, his most likely heir apparent, in his place. Now four years later, Fugger was still alive, but Ulrich was dead. He had passed away at age thirty-five. Ulrich’s death forced Fugger to change the will and map out a new plan for succession.

  The notary started to read. He began with a surprise. Unlike the first will, the new version included something for Fugger’s most trusted employees. It named ten people in Fugger’s inner circle and ordered that the nephews look out for them and provide for their retirement. Before, Fugger’s attitude was that he paid the staff a fair wage and they deserved no more. He had softened in the interim. The crowd then learned that the new will retained the parts from the original about priests reading masses in Fugger’s name and the estate paying peasants to pray for Fugger’s salvation. It also underlined Fugger’s attachment to the Fuggerei housing project by pledging gifts to all its residents—one florin for families with children and half a florin for those without.

  Next came the question of who would control the money. Fugger’s nephew Ulrich was dead but Ulrich’s brother Hieronymus, the other son of Ulrich the Elder, was still healthy. He was one candidate. The others were the sons of George Fugger, Raymund and Anton. Under the old will, Hieronymus would have gotten Ulrich’s share. But Fugger had been watching Hieronymus and decided he was incompetent. In the new will, Fugger reported that Hieronymus “was not especially useful in the family business nor in the business he took on himself. One supposes that he would not enjoy this sort of work.” Confirmation of his inadequacy came the following year when Hieronymus got drunk at a wedding and cut the hair off a servant girl. Fugger awarded him shares for a third of the business and forbid him from selling them. He insisted that his stake would go to Raymund and Anton when he died. This was significant because it affected not only Hieronymus but all the other heirs of Ulrich the Elder. Fugger gave them token amounts. Otherwise, he left them out in the cold. He wanted George’s boys, and only them, to carry on the Fugger business and care for the fortune.

  Fugger wrote that Anton and Raymund were the ones who had “so far help
ed me in business.” He assigned them different roles. Raymund was often sick and, in Fugger’s mind, physically unequipped for the rigors of commerce, so Fugger assigned him the task of running the fiefdoms. He became overseer of Weissenhorn, Kirchberg and the other holdings. Fugger gave the business itself, the largest commercial establishment in the world, to Anton. Fugger made the appointments sound like punishments. They would inherit the “burden, inconvenience and toil” of management.

  Anton, thirty-two years old, was four years younger than Raymund, but Fugger liked what he saw. Fugger had trained Anton by sending him on the road and letting him get to know the people and the issues in the regional offices. Anton distinguished himself early when he successfully negotiated a sensitive deal over a Polish gold mine. In Buda, he showed his talent again by spotting a self-dealing agent and firing him. Anton also had a wild side that almost spoiled his career. Once, while on assignment in Rome, he borrowed some money and fell into debt. With the help of an uncle, he recovered the money before Fugger found out. He warned a friend to say nothing: “It will do no good to write about it.” The episode sobered him. He succeeded Zink as the lead manager in Rome and successfully worked his Vatican connections to persuade the pope to join the Hungarian boycott.

  In the will, Fugger gave his nieces 5,000 florins each, an increase of 1,800 florins from the first will. He never gave any thought to giving them assets. He believed the business and fiefdoms could more easily function with fewer, not more, decision makers. Nor did he want women, including his wife, Sybille, involved in management. His grandmother and mother emerged as first-rate businesspeople after their husbands died. But Fugger wanted men to make all the decisions.

  In the first will, Fugger was generous to Sybille. He awarded her the house where the two of them lived before they moved to the palace. This was a sentimental offering. The bigger award was the spectacular neighboring property complete with a garden, chapel and tournament grounds for at-home jousting. The house was newly renovated and stuffed with furniture, tapestries and bejeweled decorations. He ordered the nephews to pay the taxes on the homes and maintain the garden. The old will returned Sybille’s 5,000 florins dowry, gave her 5,000 florins in a lump sum for her to keep invested in the business at a 5 percent interest rate and gave her 800 florins a year for expenses. In describing his award to her of the couple’s silver plate and jewelry, Fugger added a personal note about a “big diamond and large ruby panel that I recently gave her.” Sybille had a full closet. Fugger directed her to keep her best dresses but give the rest to other family members. He also gave her the marital bed. The bed had special meaning for Fugger. He noted how they had slept “by and with” each other in the bed. When she died, Fugger wanted her placed beside him in the Fugger Chapel at St. Anne’s.

  Now, four years later, Fugger was angry at Sybille and she lost ground. Her family had gone over to Luther and Sybille was leaning that way herself. Fugger may also have known about her affair with Conrad Rehlinger. In the new will, he didn’t throw her out into the street. He let her keep her dowry and the silver, but only gave her one house and it wasn’t the newly renovated one with the garden and tournament grounds but a more modest one. He canceled the 800-florin annuity and the 5,000-florin lump sum in favor of a 20,000-florin lump sum that would fall to 10,000 florins if she remarried. He let her keep their bed but struck out references to her wardrobe and her right to burial in the Fugger Chapel. Sybille’s reaction to the changes was not recorded.

  After the reading of the will, Fugger still had two issues to discuss with Anton. The first was Hungary. Under no circumstances, Fugger urged Anton, should he accept anything but full restitution. King Louis would soon be desperate, he told him. Just be patient. As the sultan inched closer, Louis would come around.

  The second issue concerned Fugger’s burial. St. Anne had fallen into the Lutheran camp when the priest Urbanus Rhegius, after his time in Schwaz, came back to Augsburg and took up a post there. Rhegius tried to be a diplomat; he still offered communion in the old form for traditionalists and in the new form for followers of Luther. Fugger hated the compromise. To him, Rhegius was as bad as Luther. As Fugger lay dying, he told Anton to find him a more suitable burial site. Anton persuaded him that St. Anne, despite Rhegius, remained true to Rome. It was a lie, but it solved the problem of where to lay Fugger’s bones.

  As this was going on, Archduke Ferdinand visited Augsburg for a meeting with the local nobility. A parade heralded his arrival. In the eight years since the imperial election, Ferdinand, now twenty-three, had come to know and respect Fugger. The Peasants’ War had brought them closer and the archduke understood the importance Fugger played in the Habsburg rise. He knew that Fugger only had a few days to live. As the parade marched past City Hall and toward the Fugger Palace, he ordered the trumpets and drums to stop. Wrote Sender, the Augsburg chronicler: “He didn’t want to cause inconvenience.” Ferdinand’s aides exhibited less dignity than their lord. During the Augsburg stay, the aides came to Fugger’s side and wheedled a small loan from him.

  December 28 was Fugger’s last day of work. In his final business decision, he rejected a loan request from Duke Albrecht of Prussia. Albrecht had recently resigned his post as Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, a Catholic order, to become a Lutheran. The loan was financially solid, but Fugger drew the line at lending to converts. The next day, Fugger fell into a deep sleep “as if,” wrote Sender, “he was dead.” Dr. Occo shooed away visitors. Others stayed away by choice. When the end came, Fugger’s nephews and wife Sybille were elsewhere. Fugger died at 4 a.m. on December 30, 1525, at the age of sixty-six. The only ones with him were a nurse and a priest. The exact cause of death is unknown, but it may have been a prostate infection.

  Sender berated himself for missing the signs. A mysterious black rainbow had appeared over Augsburg a couple of months earlier. In hindsight, he writes, the meaning was obvious. The Lord was heralding the death of Augsburg’s greatest citizen. There was no other explanation. His chronicle and other sources are mum about Fugger’s funeral, so we can only guess at the details. We can assume it lasted all day, that horses drew the hearse and that twelve pallbearers, dressed in black, carried the coffin to the crypt. The only reference to the actual event appears in the fashion book of Matthaus Schwarz. He is mum about the funeral itself, other than that he wore black. The accompanying illustration shows him and no one else.

  Sender seems to have missed Fugger more than anyone. He wrote what amounted to a eulogy in his chronicle: “The name of Jacob Fugger and his nephews are known in all kingdoms and countries and in the fields. Emperors, kings, princes and lords sent their greetings to him. The pope greeted him as a son. The Cardinals stood for him. All the businessmen of the world described him as enlightened. He was an ornament for all of Germany.”

  Sender saved his criticism for Sybille, telling a story of how Sybille bolted from “the home of her blessed husband”—taking along jewels, cash and a maid—to live with the “old man,” Rehlinger. Sybille’s relatives, in a chronicle of their own, claimed that Fugger’s nephews forced her and Rehlinger to marry using “violence and by armed force.” That way, they would only have to pay her 10,000 florins instead of 20,000 florins. Even then, the nephews refused to pay. The dispute went to court and Fugger’s will prevailed. The nephews paid her only 10,000 florins.

  When Fugger was in his thirties, he had proclaimed his intent to earn a profit as long as he could. He fulfilled the vow by working until the last. More remarkable is that Fugger died solvent. He had played a high-stakes game and, despite numerous assaults, won. Jacques Coeur, the French banker who played the same game, lost everything and died in exile. The Florentine bankers who reigned supreme in the fifteenth century—the Bardi, the Peruzzi and others—fared no better. They fell under the weight of loans to the English kings. Even the Medici only had a brief turn as a financial force. The family was a model of financial strength under Cosimo, but his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent cared mor
e about statecraft and the arts than business. The firm liquidated two years after Lorenzo’s death under the weight of debt. As we’ve seen, even some Fuggers had flopped. Jacob Fugger’s cousin Lucas went bankrupt after lending to the very client, Maximilian of Habsburg, who made Jacob Fugger’s career. Fugger’s rival Hochstetter was still in business after the Peasants’ War, but his luck ran out in 1529 after he tried to take the Maestrazgos for himself and corner the mercury market. Faced with liquidation, he begged “my dear cousin” Anton Fugger for a bailout. Anton refused and Hochstetter went to debtor’s prison. Anton was among the creditors and took Hochstetter’s castle in Burgwalden, his house in Schwaz and a smelter in Jenbach.

  Fugger survived because of a dull but common-sense approach to financial planning. Despite the massive, unsecured loan to Charles V, he had squirreled away enormous sums—putting much of it in real estate—and took fewer risks as he grew older. Yet he continued to earn a strong return as shown in a balance sheet his accountants compiled shortly after his death.

  The balance sheet of 1527 is the most important document for understanding Jacob Fugger. For this reason, it’s worth considering the nature of the thing. While a balance sheet might seem dull and indecipherable, it is remarkably revealing because it records every activity of an enterprise from the moment of inception. It is like a beach whose shape changes with every wave. Each transaction—every payment to a contractor, every weekly pay stub, every cashed check—adds or reduces the whole. A balance sheet is history condensed to a few lines and a single page. It is the document banks should look at, but often don’t, before making a loan. It is the document that prompted Goethe, the great Romantic writer, to declare, “Double-entry bookkeeping is one of the most beautiful discoveries of the human spirit.” He understood how a balance sheet turns the mere recording of receipts and expenses—the stuff of income, cash flow and other accounting statements—into something infinitely more informative.