Financial History Issue 114 (Summer 2015) | Page 22

The Richest
Man Who
Ever Lived
By Greg Steinmetz

© Adam Woolfitt/Corbis

On a spring day in 1523, Jacob Fugger,
a banker from the German city of Augsburg, summoned a scribe and dictated a
collection notice. A customer was behind
on a loan payment. After years of leniency,
Fugger had finally lost patience.
Fugger wrote collection letters all the time.
But the 1523 letter was remarkable because
he addressed it not to a struggling fur trader
or a cash-strapped spice importer but to
Charles V, the most powerful man on earth.
Charles had 81 titles, including Holy Roman
emperor, king of Spain, king of Naples, king
of Jerusalem, duke of Burgundy and lord of
Asia and Africa. He ruled an empire that was
the b Y