Lazarus Henckel

Lazarus Henckel was a prominent businessman – banker, mine-owner and financier who was ennobled for his services as Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Descendant of an old family from Silesia, Lazarus gained his first business experience in Germany. He arrived to Vienna working as factor for an Ulm firm and settled there permanently in 1581. He made his fortune in the sale of kerseys from England which he bought in Nuremberg and sold in Austria and elsewhere on the east. The fabric was used for uniforms of the Habsburg soldiers. He also exported to the eastern market wine, scythes and knives, and participated in a great traffic in cattle from Transylvania and the middle and lower Danube valley for consumption in Austria and southern Germany. Although he already made some loans to the Holy Roman Emperor, his greatest opportunity came with the war against the Turks in 1593 when he became the financier of the Emperor Rudolf II. Lazarus underwrote loans raised by Rudolf II, transmitted subsidies to allies and provided help in the payment of troops in the field.

Although he suffered some setbacks in the later period when the trade with Transylvania was cut off and after he lost control of his Hungarian estates including the Neusohl copper mines, he managed to overcome these difficulties and died as a wealthy landowner and founder of the noble house of von Donnersmarck.