The Richest Man Who Ever Lived

May 18, 2015
Steinmetz, a securities analyst and former journalist, reveals the untold story of history’s “first documented millionaire”: 16th-century German banker Jacob Fugger. Born into an Augsburg textile family and apprenticed in Venice to learn the trade, young Fugger also picked up the basics of banking before moving on to mining and spices. However, his important contributions to history revolve around loans: funding conquests by Maximilian of Hapsburg, orchestrating the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and providing Maximilian’s successor, Charles, with “the biggest loan the world had ever seen” for his campaign to be emperor. Fugger is further credited with destroying the Hanseatic League and organizing a debate that led to Pope Leo lifting the ban on usury. Steinmetz argues that Fugger also indirectly sparked the Protestant Reformation by accepting indulgence money as loan payments. When a peasant revolt threatened capitalist stability, Fugger hired army commander George von Truchsess to quash it. Steinmetz is direct about his subject’s dishonorable characteristics: mistreating employees, ruthlessly ruining business rivals, and calling in debts from the family of a recently deceased friend. While providing an interesting slice of history, Steinmetz fails to satisfactorily flesh out this obscure figure, and his account vacillates wildly between admiration and disgust. Agent: David Kuhn, Kuhn Projects.