Augsburger Handelshauser im Wandel des historischen Urteils. by Johannes BurkhardtReview by: William Bradford SmithThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 177-179Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2543232 .

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Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXVIII / 1 (1997)

Book Reviews

Augsburger Handelshauser im Wandel des historischen Urteils. Ed. Johannes Burkhardt. Colloquia Augustana, Bd. 3. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996.425 pp. DM 68,-.

Classical historiography and popular imagination have often linked personalities with his- torical movements. So, Christopher Columbus has come to represent the Age of Exploration while Martin Luther remains the foremost character of the Reformation.To these might be added the Fuggers as representatives of early capitalism. Alas, as Johannes Burckhardt notes in the introduction to this collection of essays, the Fuggers have never received the attention given to a Columbus or a Luther. Until the nineteenth century, the place of the Fuggers and other merchant houses in the history of capitalism was generally ignored, obscured, or trans- formed into myth. For the scholars who met at the Institute for European Cultural History in Augsburg in July 1993, the task was to come to grips with the varying historical assess- ments of the Fuggers and other merchant houses from the sixteenth century to the present. Contemporary and historical perceptions of the great Handelshduser of Augsburg provide the central theme of the volume.

The twenty-four essays included in this collection are broadly divided into three groups. The first section deals with contemporary assessments of the Fuggers and other families. These discussions concern the Stdndeproblem that arose from the ambiguous place of late medieval merchant dynasts within the traditional medieval social conception of the three estates. The second section, entitled "Forgotten Dimensions of a Myth," is more heteroge- neous, comprising essays dealing with an array of topics ranging from the structure of six- teenth-century business undertakings to the merchants' taste for Greek and Roman antiqui- ties.The third section deals with the "rediscovery" of the Fuggers and the economic history of Augsburg in the historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Johannes Burckhardt provides a brief but cogent introductory essay which effectively relates the papers back to the central themes of the conference. A number of the papers deal with the later phase of Augsburg's history in the eighteenth century. For purposes of this review, however, we will limit our focus to those articles dealing with the sixteenth century.

Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger's paper on the debate over the relationship between wealth and honor, Gut und Ehre, sets the stage for the first section. From Ulrich von Hutten and Jean Bodin to Werner Sombart, the merchant's search for fiscal gain has been decried as a symptom of a "plebeian" spirit, for the market knows nothing of honor. Still, the profound economic and political changes in the sixteenth century seemed conspired to betray long- standing social distinctions.The exclusivity of the aristocratic estate seemed particularly vul- nerable. Stollberg-Rilinger discusses the various noble strategies of adaptation and reaction- ary delimitation but shows how the Fuggers' success made a mockery of efforts to maintain traditional categories. The Fuggers demonstrated how fluid socioeconomic categories had become, revealing the obsolescence of the "noble-common" dichotomy.

In the range of the discussion, the author does an excellent job of placing the narrow field of inquiry that defines the collection within the broader discussion of noble honor. Indeed, this essay, taken with those that follow, provides a useful prolegomenon to the study of the changing perceptions of such categories as "estates," "nobility," and "bourgeoisie" in the six- teenth century.

The three essays that follow, by Mark Hiberlin, Wolfgang Wiist, and Dana Koutna-Karg,

177

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178 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXVIII / 1 (1997)

explore the assessment of the Fuggers and other Augsburg families in contemporary litera- ture. Hdberlin concentrates on the Augsburg sources, in particular the chronicle of Lukas Rem; Wiist extracts an alternative perspective from "travel literature"; Koutna-Karg explores the Fuggers' representations of themselves in their family chronicles, archives, and such public festivals as funerals and weddings. All three essays reveal a general pattern: while nota- bles from beyond the walls were generally impressed with the Fuggers, Augsburgers tended to roundly condemn them, largely because despite their meteoric rise to wealth and power, the Fuggers remained outside the traditional social structures of the town. They were not even accepted into the patriciate until after they had purchased a patent of nobility.

The perception of the Fuggers within aristocratic society forms the basis for Johannes Engerd's discussion of the Epaenesis of Lucas Geizkoflers. The work comprises a parallel family history of the Fuggers and the Montforts, occasioned by the passing of the estates of CountJakob von Montfort to his Fugger in-laws. In order to place the two families on equal footing, the Fuggers' economic enterprise is "feudalized." Their branch offices become "manors" while their partners, managers, and employees are transformed into a circle of retainers (Gefolgschaft).This underscores a paradox of the place of the Fugger fortunes in the debate over "honor" and "estate."While they revealed the inadequacies of conventional cat- egories, the Fuggers continued to represent a fundamentally conservative ethos. This was especially true in the field of religion. Fugger loyalty to Catholicism was crucial to their acceptance among the Catholic nobility and, in large part, cause for their general rejection by the Augsburg merchant community.

The second section, "Forgotten Dimensions of a Myth," contains several case studies which explore other aspects of the "Fugger problem" outside that of their place within the traditional social order. Reinhard Hildebrandt deals with the organization of merchant com- panies in the sixteenth century. His argument is simple: the principle of the "primacy of for- eign policy" has shaped studies of merchant endeavor. Too little effort has been spent on exploring the "inner life" of trading companies. Likewise, while much attention has been paid to the merchants, the Handelsherren, the employees, the Handelsdiener, have been largely ignored. As the scope of Fugger undertakings grew, the organization of their companies became more elaborate. The numbers of employees grew while their tasks became increas- ingly specialized.The firm became not simply an economic endeavor but an extended fam- ily, administered by a patriarchal Regierer who dictated not only policy but social norms as well. At the same time, participation in these firms allowed for a certain degree of vertical mobility but more importantly, extensive horizontal mobility.

These issues of alternative loyalty and social mobility underscore Rolf Kiessling's article on contemporary criticisms of the putting-out system. Wage labor was contrary to artisan tradition; it was dishonorable work. Worse yet, it appeared to threaten the common good (Gemeinen Nutz) which was the foundation of communal political and social order. Hilde- brandt argues that urban society was sufficiently flexible to absorb new types of work. "New professions" became "normal professions." Kiessling suggests that this occurred simply because conservative forces could neither hinder nor stop the spread of new forms of eco- nomic organization.

The issue of communication between Augsburg and the wider world is central to the next five articles. Eberhard Schmitt explores the papers of Phillip von Hutten, more soldier of fortune than merchant, as a source for the history of the Welser enterprise in Venezuela. Gabriele vonTrachburg-Kuhnle writes on the activities ofAugsburger merchants inAntwerp while Sibylle Backman discusses the experience of Italian merchants in Augsburg.The Augs- burg mercantile dynasties seem to have found a place for themselves in Antwerp. The Hoch-

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Book Reviews 179

stetters even had a street named after them. On the other hand, since the Augsburgers main- tained such a strong presence in Italy, the Italians appear to have found little reason for remaining in Augsburg. Given their interests abroad, it is no surprise that Jakob Fugger entered into partnership with Franz von Taxis and Maximilian I in the establishment of the Post, and as Wolfgang Behringer suggests, confessional loyalties combined with the wealth and influence of the Fuggers to ensure that Augsburg was one of the first centers of the impe- rial and Habsburg postal systems.

The last set of essays address the rediscovery of the Fuggers and ofAugsburg's commercial history in general in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Several of the papers, most notably those of Rudolf Palme, Andrew John Martin, and Helmut Koopman, discuss the image of the Fuggers as it appears on the margins of the scholarly world, in historical paint- ing, local Tyrolian Heimatskunde, and literature. Karl Filser's paper, "Fugger for Children," takes this trend perhaps to its furthest limits, seeking the popular image of the Augsburg mer- chants in school texts.

The final section begins with a general survey of the place of the Fuggers in the "classical" Prussian historical tradition. Wolfgang Weber amply demonstrates how the Protestant tradi- tion consistently marginalized and degraded the memory of the Fuggers. They were con- demned for their association with Johann Tetzel and Albrecht of Mainz. That the Fuggers remained true to the old faith and actively opposed the Reformation in Augsburg led histo- rians from Leopold von Ranke to Willy Andreas (here Weber quotes the 1972 edition, Andreas' Deutschland vor der Reformation) to attack the "money-changers" (Wechslern). For Werner Sombart they represented the most hateful and disgusting example of monopoly capitalism. Even Johannes Janssen, the great Catholic counterblast to the Rankean tradition, found cause to assault the Fuggers' memory, declaring them worse than the Jews in their usury.

Certainly the Fuggers' confessional loyalties would have been unacceptable within Prot- estant historiography, but Weber ultimately identifies a second, perhaps more difficult ques- tion. As Catholic merchants who remained true to the emperor and to the ideals of tradi- tional aristocratic society, the Fuggers were obvious exceptions to Max Weber's thesis of the Calvinist roots of modern capitalism. Indeed, one could argue that the case of the Fuggers very nearly overturns the Weber thesis.

Max Weber lies behind the scenes in many of the essays in this volume as does the con- fessional issue.At the same time,WolfgangWeber is the only contributor to directly confront the "problem" posed by the Fuggers' allegiance to the old faith. Nearly every author touches on the confessional question, but none of the papers really does it justice. Given the connec- tions ofWolfgang Reinhard, one of the chief theorists of the Konfessionalisierung thesis, to the Augsburg historical community, the relative dearth of references to confessional studies is dif- ficult to understand.

Still, this is a fine collection containing a number of thought-provoking essays. Its greatest service is to place the Fuggers and their contemporaries within the context of both the Augsburg merchant community and the wider world. The first section in particular holds together well and, as a unit, can be read as an instructive general history of the evolution of the merchant "estate" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In addition, while Anton and Jakob Fugger may never rank with Luther and Columbus, the contributors have cer- tainly done well to remind us of the prominent role played by Augsburg merchants in the social and economic history of the sixteenth century. William Bradford Smith ................... Oglethorpe University

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