Seite - 111 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

111In Hans Jakob Fugger’s Service Imperial Council, and in 1551 he was given an honorary position in Ferdinand’s household. In  the next decade he appears to have determined the foreign pol- icy of Augsburg almost single-handedly, a task for which he was particularly suited because of his wide and influential acquaintance. Only after his uncle Anton’s death in 1560, when he had to take over the management of the firm, he began to loose interest in the daily routine of politics, and in 1565 his cousin Marx Fugger took his place in the City Council. Already in the preceding decade Hans Jakob had been engaged in the di- rection of the firm. Since 1550 he had been chiefly occupied with the man- agement of its Spanish interests, which had immeasurably increased in the preceding quarter of a century: one only needs to think of the monopoly in mercury which the firm obtained from Charles v, its lease on the possessions of the ‘Maestrazgos’—the Spanish knightly orders of Santiago, Alcántara and Calatrava—and of its branches in Chile and Peru. Such expansion had only been possible because the firm had continually agreed to finance Charles v’s policies, and therefore the bankruptcy of the Spanish Crown following Charles’ abdication and the consequent financial crisis profoundly shook the founda- tions of the firm. It would have been difficult even for a man of much greater commercial interest and talent than Hans Jakob to recoup the immense losses incurred: the Fugger remained creditors of the Spanish crown for close to three million ducats. Hans Jakob’s princely style of life and his generous patronage of learning and of the arts did not contribute to redress the balance, and he soon found himself even in private financial difficulties. In 1561 and 1562 he could not pay his taxes, and his debts in Augsburg alone came to over two hundred thousand Gulden; in June 1564 his lack of solvency had become so pressing that he was constrained to announce his personal bankruptcy, with a total amount of debts of over a million Gulden. This seemed worse than it was: Fugger possessed very extensive landed property in Alsace, Swabia and Bavaria, and in fact he was helped out by the Augsburg City Council itself, who saw to an agreement with his local creditors—these were in fact paid off even earlier than was stipulated—and by Duke Albrecht v of Bavaria [Fig. 3.4], who first lent him a large sum of cash, and afterwards agreed to take over part of Fugger’s debts in return for his splendid library and his collection of antiqui- ties. The Duke moreover successfully mediated in Hans Jakob’s difficulties with his cousins, which were caused by his bankruptcy and by a dispute about his share in the assets of the firm after Anton’s death. The conflict was finally re- solved in early October 1565, when a final division was made, and Hans Jakob completely withdrew from the firm.5 5 On the consequent litigation of Hans Jakob and his heirs with the other branches of the fam- ily, see Schneider 2016.