The Richest Man Who Ever Lived
The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger
(Sprache: Englisch)
A colourful introduction to one of the most influential businessmen in history, Jacob Fugger, the Renaissance banker.
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A colourful introduction to one of the most influential businessmen in history, Jacob Fugger, the Renaissance banker.
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The Richest Man Who Ever Lived 1 SOVEREIGN DEBT
In Renaissance Germany, few cities matched the energy and excitement of Augsburg. Markets overflowed with everything from ostrich eggs to the skulls of saints. Ladies brought falcons to church. Hungarian cowboys drove cattle through the streets. If the emperor came to town, knights jousted in the squares. If a murderer was caught in the morning, a hanging followed in the afternoon for all to see. Augsburg had a high tolerance for sin. Beer flowed in the bathhouses as freely as in the taverns. The city not only allowed prostitution but maintained the brothel.
Jacob Fugger was born here in 1459. Augsburg was a textile town and Fugger's family had grown rich buying cloth made by local weavers and selling it at fairs in Frankfurt, Cologne and over the Alps, in Venice. Fugger was youngest of seven boys. His father died when he was ten and his mother took over the business. She had enough sons to work the fairs, bribe highway robbers, and inspect cloth in the bleaching fields, so she decided to take him away from the jousts and bathhouses and put him on a different course. She decided he should be a priest.
It's hard to imagine that Fugger was happy about it. If his mother got her way and he went to the seminary, he would have to shave his head and surrender his cloak for the black robes of the Benedictines. He would have to learn Latin, read Aquinas and say prayers eight times a day, beginning with matins at two in the morning. The monks fended for themselves, so Fugger, as a monk, would have to do the same. He would have to thatch roofs and boil soap. Much of the work was drudgery, but if he wanted to become a parish priest or, better yet, a secretary in Rome, he had to pay his dues and do his chores.
The school was in a tenth-century monastery in the village of Herrieden. Near Nuremburg, Herrieden was a four-day walk from Augsburg or two days for those lucky enough to have a horse. Nothing ever happened
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in Herrieden and, even if it did, Fugger wouldn't be seeing it. Benedictines were an austere bunch and seminarians stayed behind the walls. While there, Fugger would have to do something even more difficult than getting a haircut or comb wool. He would have to swear to a life of celibacy, obedience and, in the ultimate irony considering his future, poverty.
There were two types of clerics. There were the conservatives, who blindly followed Rome, and reformers like Erasmus of Rotterdam, the greatest intellectual of the age, who sought to eradicate what had become an epidemic of corruption. We will never know what sort of priest Fugger would become because just before it was time for him to join the monks, Fugger's mother reconsidered. Fugger was now fourteen and she decided she could use him after all. She asked the church to let Fugger out of his contract, freeing him for an apprenticeship and a life in trade. Years later, when Fugger was already rich, someone asked how long he planned to keep working. Fugger said no amount of money would satisfy him. No matter how much he had, he intended "to make profits as long as he could."
In doing so, he followed a family tradition of piling up riches. In an age when the elite considered commerce beneath them and most people had no ambitions beyond feeding themselves and surviving the winter, all of Fugger's ancestors-men and women alike-were strivers. In those days, no one went from nothing to superrich overnight. A person had to come from money-several generations of it. Each generation had to be richer than the one before. But the Fuggers were a remarkably successful and driven bunch. One after the other added to the family fortune.
Jacob's grandfather, Hans Fugger, was a peasant who live
There were two types of clerics. There were the conservatives, who blindly followed Rome, and reformers like Erasmus of Rotterdam, the greatest intellectual of the age, who sought to eradicate what had become an epidemic of corruption. We will never know what sort of priest Fugger would become because just before it was time for him to join the monks, Fugger's mother reconsidered. Fugger was now fourteen and she decided she could use him after all. She asked the church to let Fugger out of his contract, freeing him for an apprenticeship and a life in trade. Years later, when Fugger was already rich, someone asked how long he planned to keep working. Fugger said no amount of money would satisfy him. No matter how much he had, he intended "to make profits as long as he could."
In doing so, he followed a family tradition of piling up riches. In an age when the elite considered commerce beneath them and most people had no ambitions beyond feeding themselves and surviving the winter, all of Fugger's ancestors-men and women alike-were strivers. In those days, no one went from nothing to superrich overnight. A person had to come from money-several generations of it. Each generation had to be richer than the one before. But the Fuggers were a remarkably successful and driven bunch. One after the other added to the family fortune.
Jacob's grandfather, Hans Fugger, was a peasant who live
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Autoren-Porträt von Greg Steinmetz
Greg Steinmetz is a partner at a money management firm in New York. He previously worked for The Wall Street Journal, where he covered investment banking before becoming Berlin Bureau Chief and then London Bureau Chief. His first book, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger, was heralded by Andrew Ross Sorkin as one of the best reads of 2015.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Greg Steinmetz
- 2016, repr., 304 Seiten, mit farbigen Abbildungen, Maße: 15,1 x 22,8 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Simon & Schuster US
- ISBN-10: 1451688563
- ISBN-13: 9781451688566
- Erscheinungsdatum: 01.08.2016
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
"Fugger was the first modern plutocrat. Like his contemporaries Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia, he knew the world as it was, not how he wanted it to be. This is the absorbing story of how, by being indispensable to customers and ruthless with enemies, Fugger wrote the playbook for everyone who keeps score with money. A must for anyone interested in history or wealth creation." Bryan Burrough, author of Days of Rage and co-author of Barbarians at the Gate
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