Konrad Rott

Konrad Rott (* around 1530 in Augsburg ; † July 7, 1610 in Lisbon ) was an Augsburg merchant and speculator .

In 1578, Rott initiated a proposal by the Augsburg merchants to organize an imperial imperial post office in Augsburg, which Emperor Rudolf II refused. Rott then tried to persuade the Elector August of Saxony to found a supra-regional Reichspost. The imperial court then granted the elector a territorial post, but not the right to operate a post in foreign areas. After lengthy discussions and the appointment of a commission, the Imperial Post Office began operations in 1597 , under the direction of the General Obrist Postmaster Leonhard I. von Taxis . The Reichspost was operated by the Thurn und Taxis family until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 .

As early as 1575, Rott had managed to lease the European pepper trade from the Portuguese King Sebastian for a period of five years . For this purpose, Rott had to advance around 3 million ducats because it took two years for the first pepper from the growing areas to arrive for sale in Europe. In order to seal off the market from non-European competitors, Rott initially concluded contracts with two companies. On the basis of the intercession of the Electoral Saxon Chamber of Commerce Hans Harrer , who was related by marriage to Rott , Elector August initiated a third sales company in 1579 under the name “Thuringian Pepper Trading Company in Leipzig”, which was supposed to be responsible for the pepper trade north of the Alps and in the Baltic States . The elector decided that the city of Leipzig would be the central transhipment point ; he wanted to set up an exchange bank with start-up capital of 50,000 thalers especially for this purpose .

The plan to monopolize the pepper trade failed due to a lack of money. Neither the elector nor the Leipzig bourgeoisie, who were involved in the “Thuringian Pfefferhandelsgesellschaft zu Leipzig”, could and would not raise the necessary capital. Last but not least, the pepper shortage expected by Rott and the associated price increase in Europe did not materialize. When King Sebastian of Portugal died in early 1580, this meant the end of the project.

Rott had to file for bankruptcy and fled from his creditors to Portugal. On April 2, 1580, a message, initiated by Rott himself, reached Dresden, according to which he had committed suicide by poisoning in a village near Chur in Switzerland. He was later appointed consul of the German nation in Lisbon by King Philip II of Spain, where he died in 1610.

literature

• Uwe Schirmer: Public economics in Saxony (1553-1631). Motives - strategies - structures. In: Jürgen Schneider (Ed.): Public and private economic activity in changing economic systems. Franz Steiner Verlag , Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 978-3-515-07868-9 , pp. 121-157

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Johannes Falke: The Elector August's Portuguese pepper trade . In: Karl von Weber (ed.): Archives for the Saxon history . tape 5 . Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1867, p. 390 ff .