How the world’s first world dealer, Jakob Fugger, acquired wealthy – DW – 12/14/2025 | EUROtoday

For Greg Steinmetz, the Augsburg, Germany-born Jakob Fugger was “the first person to conduct trade on a truly global scale.”

Steinmetz, a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journalprofiled Fugger within the 2015 biography The Richest Man Who Ever Lived.

Speaking with DW, Steinmetz mentioned world commerce barely existed on the time, till German Emperor Charles V prolonged European management into South America throughout his reign as Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain within the sixteenth century.

There wasn’t a lot of a globe to commerce with, Steinmetz famous, other than commerce with India, and what’s now Indonesia and China.

But retailers may solely journey west after Columbus had found America in 1492, that means “only half the globe” had been identified to Europeans, and Fugger was “at the beginning of that phenomenon” later often known as world commerce.

How schooling modified all the pieces

Born right into a affluent Augsburg household whose wealth started together with his grandfather, grasp weaver Hans Fugger, Jakob acquired his business coaching in Venice, Italy. The metropolis not solely formed Jakob’s style for the Renaissance but additionally launched him to a breakthrough that will speed up his rise: double-entry bookkeeping.

Since there have been no enterprise colleges again then, Steinmetz mentioned, service provider households would “send their boys out to become apprentices,” and Germans closely traded with Venice.

“He [Fugger] took all of those Venetian secrets, including double-entry bookkeeping, back to Germany with him. And he was the first in Germany to employ these modern methods,” Steinmetz mentioned.

With meticulous data, Fugger all the time knew the place his funds stood — in contrast to many rivals. He additionally constructed an intelligence community of brokers throughout main European cities and even small German cities.

“People would feed him with information, by courier and horses … so that he would know about things before his competitors did, and he could use that to his advantage. Information today is everything, and it was everything back then, too,” Steinmetz mentioned.

Banker to emperors

After his brothers died, Jakob Fugger took sole management of the household enterprise in 1510 and strengthened its ties to the Habsburg monarchy, lending aggressively to Emperors Maximilian I and Charles V.

In return, he secured entry to profitable silver and copper operations in Tyrol and what was then Hungary. He didn’t personal the mines outright, however held rights and stakes that proved terribly worthwhile.

Europe had little to supply Asia on the time moreover valuable metals. “Europe wasn’t exporting technology or luxury goods,” Steinmetz defined. “But it had silver, gold, and copper — and that’s where Fugger became indispensable.”

Copper powers an empire

Martin Kluger, CEO of the Context publishing home in Augsburg and Nuremberg, and likewise an creator of a number of books on the Fugger household, mentioned India — then technologically and economically forward of Europe — suffered a power scarcity of copper, which was a “stroke of extremely good luck” for the Fugger mining pursuits.

And timing amplified that benefit: “Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India in 1498, just three years after the Fuggers moved into large-scale copper mining in Neusohl [today Banska Bystrica in Slovakia]. Demand soared, and the Fuggers held the supply,” mentioned Kluger.

Copper consumption was rising in Europe as nicely — in shipbuilding, weaponry, cookware and monumental structure. Kluger famous that the Habsburgs and the Hungarian crown typically repaid money owed by granting mining rights as a result of they lacked different means.

“The aristocracy’s limited commercial knowledge worked in the Fuggers’ favor,” he added.

Fugger additionally ensured that highly effective but massively indebted debtors saved paying. His technique, Steinmetz mentioned, was to “make himself indispensable.”

“Emperor Maximilian was constantly fighting wars and had to pay mercenaries. The only one who could come up with money when Maximilian needed it quickly was Fugger.”

A legacy that endures

Lars Börner, a German financial historical past knowledgeable, believes Fugger reshaped European finance as a result of he persuaded the pope to loosen up the Catholic Church’s ban on charging curiosity, which opened the door to fashionable lending practices.

“It’s no secret that the pope also liked to pull in the highest returns possible. Interest ban or not,” Börner lately advised German public radio Deutschlandfunk.

In change, he mentioned, Fugger shared in church revenues, together with the controversial sale of indulgences used to fund St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome — a apply that ultimately sparked Protestant revolt, the Reformation.

Yet Fugger’s most seen legacy is located in his Bavarian hometown of Augsburg: the so-called Fuggerei, the world’s first social housing complicated, based in 1521.

It nonetheless operates right this moment, and like 500 years in the past, residents pay solely a nominal hire. Visitors from all over the world tour the group, which stays a tangible image of his affect.

Historians estimate Fugger’s whole wealth on the equal of $300 billion to $400 billion right this moment (€255 billion to €340 billion). In Fugger’s time, this amounted to between 2% and 10% of your entire financial output of Europe — and nicely above the present wealth of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos compared to the US gross home product.

While modern-day philanthropists akin to Bill Gates work to form their legacies by means of foundations, company historian Boris Gehlen advised DW they’re unlikely to match Fugger’s long-term influence. “Their legacy won’t be as significant as Fugger’s,” he mentioned.

This article was initially written in German.