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The Fuggers of Augsburg: Pursuing Wealth and Honor in Renaissance Germany . By Mark Häberlein . Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press , 2012. Pp. xi + 286. Cloth $39.50. ISBN 978-0813932446 .
Book Reviews
In this accessible and readable book, Mark Häberlein seeks to rescue the Fuggers--the Augsburg banking family best known to English readers for their ties to the Habsburg family--from the intentions of earlier scholars who have seen the Fuggers as forerunners of modern captains of industry, or, as in the work of Götz von Pölnitz (Die Fugger, 1998), have viewed Jakob and his heirs as representatives of a national spirit foreign to the true nature of the German lands and character. Drawing on his earlier studies on urban elites, Häberlein succeeds admirably in this endeavor, using the notion of the pursuit of wealth and honor (inspired by Pierre Bourdieu) to see the Fuggers not so much as romantic individuals but rather as members of a social group that sought to meet the expectations of their milieu and, in so doing, internalized these practices into their own sense of themselves and their self-presentation. Häberlein achieves this goal by focusing on...