Augsburg Banking Center

Timeline

1. c. 1480–1520Augsburg · AugsburgFigures such as Jakob Fugger accumulated capital through the Tyrolean silver mines, Hungarian copper mines, and the Antwerp–Venice trade network, establishing a transnational banking headquarters in Augsburg and providing war loans and political donations to Maximilian I and various courts, making the city an imperial financial hub.
2. 1521–1530Augsburg · AugsburgAround the 1521 Diet of Worms, the Fugger bank provided critical credit for Charles V's election and the war against France; in the 1520s Augsburg simultaneously experienced the spread of Luther's ideas and divisions within the city council over confessional questions, with the banking families' interests deeply bound to the Catholic emperor's alliance, laying the political and economic groundwork for the 1530 Diet of Augsburg.
3. 1530Augsburg · AugsburgIn 1530 Charles V convened the Imperial Diet at Augsburg, demanding that Protestant princes accept the Augsburg Confession; during the Diet the Fugger family continued to provide financial support to the emperor from the city, and Augsburg's status as a combined financial-political center reached its peak for the first half of the sixteenth century.
4. 1540–1560Augsburg · AugsburgIn the 1550s, defaults on Spanish and papal debts, price fluctuations in American silver, and rising costs of religious wars severely impacted the Augsburg banking network; the assets of the Fugger and Welser families shrank, and Europe's financial center gradually shifted to Genoa and Amsterdam.