Hans Fugger

Merchant and politician
Hans Fugger von der Lilie was a German businessman and politician of the Fugger family. He was the second son of Anton Fugger and Anna Rehlinger but after his father’s death in 1560 he and his brothers Marx, Hieronymus, and Jakob managed the substantial family estates and business together.

Hans received cultural and philosophical education as well as a mercantile one. His father stated in his will that his sons “should continue to study and travel with learned men as tutors as well as experience and learn foreign languages” and later they should be “placed at the courts of his Roman imperial and royal majesties, so that they might be promoted to and employed in offices and honorable services in due time”. The brothers did indeed traveled and visited universities all across Europe.

Hans seems to have started his career in the family firm in 1557 when he was sent to its Antwerp office, where a difficult situation for the firm’s business had ensued after the Spanish crown and the regency in the Netherlands had stopped making payment for their loans.

After Anton’s death in 1560 Hans and his brothers managed the business together. In 1573 they divided the business between them, with Hans getting (among others) the lands in Kirchheim, Glött, Burg Stettenfels and Duttenstein. In 1596, after Marx’s death, Hans was elected head of the whole Fugger business.