Unlike the citizenry of their hometown and most other trading patricians of German free imperial cities, such as the Tuchers, they never converted to Lutheranism, as presented in the Augsburg Confession, but rather remained with the Roman Catholic Church and thus close to the Habsburg emperors.

[1] Jakob Fugger "the Rich" was elevated to the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire in May 1511 and assumed the title Imperial Count of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn in 1514.

Today, he is considered to be one of the wealthiest people ever to have lived, with a GDP-adjusted net worth of over $400 billion, and approximately 2% of the entire GDP of Europe at the time.

While the company was dissolved in 1657, the Fuggers remained wealthy landowners and ruled the County of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn.

The founder of the family was Hans Fugger, a weaver at Graben, near the Swabian Free City of Augsburg.

The Fugger family itemized and inventoried a large number of Asian rugs, an unusual undertaking at the time.

Jakob's eldest son, Ulrich, took over the business on his father's death, and in 1473 he provided new suits of clothes to Frederick, his son Maximilian I, and his suite on their journey to Trier to meet Charles the Bold of Burgundy and the betrothal of the young prince to Charles's daughter Maria.

When the Fuggers made their first loan to the Archduke Sigismund in 1487, they took as security an interest in silver and copper mines in the Tyrol.

He was elevated to the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire in May 1511, made Imperial Count in 1514, and in 1519, led a consortium of German and Italian businessmen that loaned Charles V 850,000 florins (about 95,625 oz(t) or 2974 kg of gold) to procure his election as Holy Roman Emperor over Francis I of France.

Jakob's aim was to establish a copper monopoly by opening foundries in Hohenkirchen and Fuggerau (named for the family, in Carinthia) and by expanding the sales organization in Europe, especially the Antwerp agency.

At the height of his power Jakob Fugger was sharply criticized by his contemporaries, especially by Ulrich von Hutten and Martin Luther, for selling indulgences and benefices and urging the Pope to rescind or amend the prohibition on the levying of interest.

The imperial fiscal and governmental authorities in Nuremberg brought action against him and other merchants in an attempt to halt their monopolistic practices.

In 1514, he bought up part of Augsburg and in 1516 came to an agreement with the city that he would build and provide a number of almshouses for needy citizens.

In 1525, the Fuggers were granted the revenues from the Spanish orders of knighthood together with the profits from mercury and silver mines.

[14] After hard times under Anton's nephew and successor Johann Jakob, Anton's oldest son, Markus, carried on the business successfully, earning some 50,000,000 ducats between 1563 and 1641 from the production of mercury at Almadén alone, but the Fugger company was completely dissolved after the Thirty Years' War when Leopold Fugger returned the mines in Tyrol to the Habsburgs in 1657.

[15] Adding to the oddity is that Jacob Fugger's loans to Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg and the indulgence to repay them were what triggered Martin Luther's Reformation.