If we think about people who are not rich, not millionaires, but billionaires, those successful people who have money as punishment, perhaps names like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Amancio Ortega or Bernard Arnault come to mind. Well, not one of them, not one, has a fortune that overshadows what he had. Jacob Fugger at the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century. Her fortune was so great that she is considered the richest person in history.
The year was 1459. Pope Pius II founded the Military Order of Our Lady of Bethlehem, the Battle of Blore Health took place in England and in Augsburg (Germany), within the Fugger family, a child was born who was named by Jakob Fugger, Spanishized as Jacobo Fúcar. He is currently known as Jacobo Fúcar II “the Rich” and now we will see why.
The Fúcars
Fugger wasn’t just any last name. He was from a family that had built one of the great business empires of the time. The Fuggers began with the textile trade, but ended up being great exponents in mining, spices, real estate, gems… Their empire is considered one of the pioneers of early capitalism, just as was that of the Medici in Florence. . Then Adam Smith would come along and turn everything upside down, but that’s another story.
Jakob had several older brothers: Ulrich, Georg, Andreas, Johann and Peter. These were dedicated to the businesses of his father, Jacobo Fúcar the Elder, and with so many there was no need to have more heirs in positions of responsibility. This wasn’t like ‘Succession’. Thus, Jakob was sent to a monastery to pursue a clerical career. The problem is that some of his brothers and his father died. For Jakob, this meant leaving religious life to take care of the family business with his brother Ulrich.
Jakob had no financial training, but he had no problem dedicating a few years to learning the arts of this business in centers in Rome, Venice and Florence, where he came to have contacts with the Medici and the Holy See, something that in the long run It would open quite a few doors. In any case, the most interesting thing would come with his first commercial forays into the world of mining. This would lead to him earning a lot of money and the corresponding influence.
Jakob began lending money to miners in the Salzburg silver mines and ended up having a monopoly on the mining of said metal in Tyrol. James would later enter into a lender relationship with Maximilian I, who succeeded his father, Frederick III, as Holy Roman Emperor. Maximilian I spent a lot of money and Jakob found it a fantastic source of income.
Basically, our protagonist lent money and in exchange asked for mining exploitation and prospecting rights. This led him to have control of all the silver mines in Europe and, later, to the monopoly of the copper trade and investments in the iron industry.
He also did good things. Beyond the trospid story of bribes, money and shady things that we are going to see, Fugger did his bit to help his neighbors. One of his best-known works is the Fuggerei and it is, in essence, a social housing area in the south of Germany that is still operational today and where the rent is around one euro a year.
To have some context, only between 1487 and 1494 Tyrolean silver reported 400,000 guilders in profits to the Fúcar company. How can we know if that was a lot or a little? Perhaps knowing that James financed the Cambrai League War with 150,000 guilders tells us something. Later we will see what his fortune was at the time of his death, but for now let’s stay with the fact that in the year 1511, his brother Ulrich died and Jakob was left as the sole owner of the company.
Power in the shadows
Jakob Fúcar managed to get his head into the church and into the sale of indulgences via simony (in short, becoming an archbishop with a checkbook). Fúcar did this with Albert of Brandenburg, to whom he advanced 48,000 florins in 1515. In fact, this business served to build the Cathedral of Saint Peter as crowdfunding. Such was his influence that Martin Luther, the same Luther of the Reformation Protestant and The 95 Theses, said in his writing ‘To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation’ that “a bridle should be put in Fúcar and such companies’ mouths.”
He not only financed some archbishops and Popes, but also put money for the first trip to India and Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition. However, one of the most interesting episodes occurred in 1519 with the death of Maximilian I. The crown of the Holy Roman Empire having been freed, the two options were the king of France, Francis I; or Maximilian’s grandson, Charles of Austria aka Charles I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire. The name gives us a clue.
Fugger had a genuine interest in Charles becoming emperor: the debts. Maximilian I had left all his debts as an inheritance, so Jakob gave Charles a hand to become emperor: he bribed five of the seven prince-electors. The total bribe was 852,000 florins of which Fugger put up 544,000. Guess what was the first thing he asked for in return? Indeed, mining concessions, specifically those of copper, salt and gold from Spain.
No heirs
That was in the year 1519 and he would enjoy the fruits of that investment for a short time. Jakob Frugger died six years later, in the year 1525, without leaving any heirs. He had a wife, Sibylle Artzt (thanks to marrying her, her family managed to enter the council of Augsburg in 1498), but it’s not that he spent much time with her. What’s more, she married another man, Konrad Rehlinger, just under two months after her death. Her estate was inherited by Raymund and Anton Fugger, her nephews. After a brief golden age, she began the downfall of her family.
At the time of his death, Jakob Fugger had a net worth of 2.1 million forints. It is impossible, or at least very complicated, to make a direct conversion because of how literally everything has changed since 1525. However, his biographer Greg Steinmetz, who was the one who put the name of this unknown character on the table almost ten years ago, years, he estimated that his fortune would be equivalent to 400,000 million dollars. The fortune of Elon Musk, the richest person on the face of the Earth, is $210 billion.
Image | Portrait of Albrecht Dürer (1518), Pexels, Wikimedia Commons
In WorldOfSoftware | I have gotten into a 420,000 euro car for the first time in my life. Now I know what millionaires feel