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221 Compared with older histories of the Fugger family, this book has attempted to provide some new perspectives. The rise of the enterprise under the leadership of Jakob and Anton Fugger was not only the work of individual personalities , but part of a general upsurge of the European economy in which an increasing demand for precious metals, as well as the emerging modern states’ need for credit, opened up new business opportunities. To realize these opportunities, the firm depended on a large number of agents and experts . The history of the Fugger firms after 1560 was not so much a story of decline as a case of structural adjustment to changing economic and political conditions. The Fugger company itself was not a unique phenomenon but a prominent version of the southern German family trading firm of the long sixteenth century. The Fuggers’ patronage of the arts and their foundations were closely tied to the family’s economic capability and wide-ranging business connections, while its contributions to the family’s increasing status and prestige were substantial. The family’s large-scale real-estate acquisitions were not a mere withdrawal to the countryside but an investment strategy that promised both economic profit and social recognition. Finally, the entry of family members into court service, princely administrations, and ecclesiastical and military careers appeared as a logical course of action when viewed against the background of the early modern processes of state formation and confessionalization. The history of the Fuggers from the late fourteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century, which has been the subject of this book, presents not a linear case of a rise from the urban bourgeoisie into the imperial nobility but, rather, a multilayered, tension-filled period in which family members simultaneously moved within different economic, political, social, and cultural spheres. The fact that family members mainly derived their living from their manorial estates and territories after the Thirty Years’ War and pursued careers at princely courts, in the church, and in the military reflects changing political and economic circumstances as well as long-term changes in family ideals and social norms. conclusion g 222 | The Fuggers of Augsburg If finally we return to the question posed in the introduction concerning the norms and motivations that guided the Fuggers’ actions during the period under consideration, we encounter the twin terms “honor” (Ehre) and “benefit” (Nutzen) in the sources time and again. In his dispositions for the future of the Hungarian trade and the family’s real estate in 1512, Jakob Fugger referred to the “honor, benefit, and advancement” of the Fuggers’ “name and lineage.”1 In letters he wrote a few weeks before his death on the occasion of the crisis of the Hungarian trade, Fugger emphasized that the conflict was not merely about a lucrative field of business, but also about rescuing his honor.2 In a privilege that he granted to the Fugger firm on October 26, 1525, Emperor Charles V stressed that the firm had substantially promoted the “honor, welfare, benefit, and advancement” of the House of Habsburg with the provision of credit and other “useful and beneficial demonstrations of obedience and loyalty”.3 In 1531, Anton Fugger remarked on the family’s real-estate purchases: “For we are not doing it for profit’s sake, but for honor ’s sake.”4 In the company contract that they concluded in the following year, Raymund, Anton, and Hieronymus Fugger emphasized the obligation, inherited from their uncle, to preserve the family’s “name and lineage still further in a good and honorable state.”5 When Anton Fugger learned about plans to resell the Swabian territories of Kirchberg and Weißenhorn to the imperial city of Ulm in 1538, he reminded King Ferdinand what his family had done for the “highest honor, benefit, welfare, and rise of the house of Austria.”6 In the same year, Georg Hörmann, Anton Fugger’s factor at Schwaz and trusted adviser, admonished Hans Jakob Fugger “that you consider well those matters which are conducive to your own honor and benefit as well as that of your house and the Fuggers’ name”.7 The family’s Book of Honors , which Hans Jakob Fugger commissioned, explicitly served the purpose that “the Fugger’ honor remain in good memory for many years and future times.” In portraying Jakob Fugger, the Book of Honors emphasized his commitment to the city’s common good, as well as the “honor and benefit” of the imperial family. Through his close...

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