The Welser was in the Middle Ages behind join gladly the Patriziergeschlecht second largest at meaning in Augsburg. Due to their increasing commercial position come to wealth, financed these upper-German buyers rulers of different European states. Overseas trading stations maintained the Welser among other things in Antwerp, Lyon, Madrid, Sevilla, Lisbon, Venice and Rom as well as Santo Domingo.

Origin of the Welser

In the realm city Augsburg Welser are provable since 1246. In the trade with cotton and Barchent first money was made. Handels and mining industry enterprises were then further backbone of their commercial success.

Anton Welser the older one (* 1451, "† 1518) entered also into the being and maritime trade with own fleet, the shipping business and the moneylending.

The spice trade

In the year 1505 the Welser with 20.000 Cruzados, the portion of several money-giving buyers largest with distance financed a India travel of the Portuguese from Italy and the German Reich, on the Molukken, where sources of spice were to be sought out. In the spice trade at that time horrende earnings/service chances signed.

Venezuela becomes property of the Welser

Emperor Karl V. left Welser to the older one from 1519 to 1551 the fate of the Welser society steered, in March 1528 in response for him granted a loan the governorship over the Spanish overseas province Venezuela. Before, in the contract from 12 February 1528 with the Spanish yard, the Welser received the monopoly on a royalty from 20.000 Dukaten to supply in the contract running time of four years 4,000 negro slaves to the Spanish colonies to South America.

Except slaves gold, beads, coloring materials were extremely profit yielding such as Indigo, noble woods, drugs and medicines in the South America trade. The Guajakholz working allegedly against the Syphilis brought in from the new world was an import hit for the Welser.

Also Anton Welser the younger one (* 1486, "† 1557) operated together with its brother the trade with Spanish America. Sugar plan days maintained the Welser on Hispaniola and on larva Irish Republican Army. To 1554 the Welser exploited the at the venezolanischen coast. With the resignation of Karl Vth in the year 1556 the commercial laws were lost.

Philippine Welser (* 1527 in Augsburg, "† 24 April 1580 on lock Ambras), the niece of Welser, was married by ore duke Ferdinand II. of Tirol in the year 1557. The marriage was concealed long time. Philippine lived on lock Ambras with Innsbruck. She collected herbs and wrote a dispensatory with many prescriptions. In addition it wrote a exquisites example book over courts in its time.

The end of the trading firm

On 1 July 1614 the commercial company of the Welser was broke (so-called The past commercial stream from the Levante over Italy and the alps to the north had shifted. The precious metals from America led to a money and a sales crisis. The large debtors of the Welser - Spain, France and the Netherlands - drove the society with state bank 9 gangs into the ruin.

Literature

• Mark of Burkhardt (Hrsg.): The Welser: new research for history and culture of the upper-German trading firm, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-05-003412-2
• Konrad Haebler: The overseas enterprises of the Welser and its partners, Leipzig 1903

Related links

• Patrizier and buyer family Welser
• Philippine Welser

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