chapter 5 Production, Trade, and Finance

Mark Häberlein

Along with Nuremberg, emerged as the major center of produc- tion, trade, and finance in south in the later and was among the pre-eminent commercial cities of Europe in the sixteenth century. The city’s merchant companies – among whom the Fuggers and Welsers were only the most prominent – extended loans to European monarchs, controlled a significant share of the continent’s silver and copper production, and en- gaged in sophisticated financial operations. Sporadically, they even ventured into the spice, gemstone, and sugar trades with Asia and the New World, thus playing a pioneering role in the forging of intercontinental connections and the emergence of global markets. But while some historians working on the great merchant corporations have tended to see their activities as manifesta- tions of a “golden age” of Augsburg’s commerce, others have maintained that these achievements were tarnished by economic woes (especially an unbal- anced craft sector dominated by a veritable army of poor weavers) and by an unstable business environment that led to numerous bankruptcies. Building on the extensive literature, the following chapter examines fustian and long-distance trade as the twin foundations of the economy of early modern Augsburg and identifies their strengths and weaknesses. It also considers several other aspects that affected the city’s economic well-being: the specialized production of luxury goods, credit markets, and the role of the public sector. Moreover, it provides a diachronic perspective by surveying the expansion of Augsburg’s economy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the disastrous impact of the Thirty Years’ War, and the city’s postwar recovery as a center of production, banking, and metal-working, which highlights its remarkable resilience in the face of economic and political disruption.

1 Fustian Weaving and Commercial Expansion: The Late Medieval Economy

In the latter half of the fourteenth century, Swabian weavers began to com- bine , imported from the eastern Mediterranean by merchants trading in Venice, with homegrown flax . The resulting fabric, fustian (Barchent

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004416055_006 102 Häberlein in German), had been developed in Italy, but now it triggered an economic boom in . As production processes were standardized and urban au- thorities monitored quality standards, the new product acquired a sound repu- tation on European markets. Weavers in the imperial cities of Augsburg, , , , Biberach, and concentrated on fustian production, while urban merchants used their commercial relations with Venice and Genoa to import cotton and distribute the finished cloth in im- portant market centers. In the course of the fifteenth century, merchants also came to play a growing role in the organization of regional textile production by advancing credit to weavers. These activities led to the emergence of one of the great late medieval European regions of craft production, which extended from to the rivers Danube and Lech.1 As the fifteenth century wore on, Augsburg and Ulm left other Swabian cit- ies behind and established themselves as the leading centers of fustian pro- duction and long-distance commerce. Excise (Ungeld) lists, which record the indirect taxes collected by the city of Augsburg, reveal an annual production of 12,000 pieces of cloth in 1385; only 25 years later the figure had risen to over 85,000 pieces per year. The weavers’ guild was able to purchase its own guild house in 1389, and shortly afterwards Augsburg fustians were traded at the im- portant fairs in Frankfurt am Main. By around 1400, they were also marketed in , Prague, Wrocław, Krakow, and Vienna. But the fustian boom was accompanied by rising social tensions: local riots broke out 1397 in which poor weavers protested against the imposition of new excise taxes.2 The boom’s main beneficiaries were long-distance merchants. Some hailed from established patrician families, while others, like the Artzt and Hämmerlin families, emerged from the ranks of the weavers’ guild, and still others were immigrants from smaller Swabian textile towns like Lauingen, Nördlingen, and Donauwörth.3 Between 1293 and 1440, at least 36 Augsburg merchants visited the Nördlingen Pentecost fair, a major rendezvous for south German trade in the late Middle Ages; nearly all of them were marketing .4 Augsburg experienced substantial economic growth in the fifteenth cen- tury, as the number of taxpayers increased from slightly less than 3,000 in 1408 to almost 4,800 in 1461 and to 5,351 in 1498.5 But the urban economy was sub- ject to recurrent crises as well. Some of these slumps were caused by political

1 Kießling, Kleine Geschichte Schwabens, p. 53. 2 Kießling, “Augsburgs Wirtschaft”, p. 175; idem, Die Stadt und ihr Land, pp. 721, 723–25. 3 Kießling, “Augsburgs Wirtschaft”, p. 177; Jahn, “Augsburger Sozialstruktur”, p. 188. 4 Steinmeyer, Nördlinger Pfingstmesse, pp. 84–89. 5 Jahn, “Augsburger Sozialstruktur”, p. 188; Kießling, Die Stadt und ihr Land, pp. 715–17.