Nuremberg Merchants

Family Business. One of the characteristic activities of the patriciate of Central European cities was as a general merchant of luxury goods. This type of business was carried out by Balthasar Paumgartner of Nuremberg, with the able assistance of his wife Magdalena. Scholars know about their lives from a series of letters they wrote between 1582 and 1598. Both were from established merchant families, and though their marriage was almost certainly arranged by their parents, they made an affectionate as well as profitable team.

Three Essential Skills. Since generations of men on both sides of his family had been merchants, Balthasar was educated for the same occupation as a matter of course. As a boy, he learned the three essential skills for a mercantile life—reading, writing, and arithmetic, probably including bookkeeping—and then spent six or seven years...