ABSTRACT
Around the year 1500 in the Alps so much of the wealth was tied up in the exploitation of mineral resources that mining communities were of crucial importance to the economic wellbeing of rulers like Maximilian and financiers like the Fuggers. In the fifteenth century alpine mining industries reached an all-time economic high point in technology, success and profit. The prospects of promotion to such a well-paid job were probably higher in mining than in any other kind of job available to the common man in the early sixteenth century. The 1470s were an important time for establishing codes of conduct in the silver-mining industry of Tirol as the ruler’s exchange was moved over the mountains into north Tirol at Hall in 1477. Mining in Tirol became a career open to talent under the rules of self-help for all and sundry in the industry by order of the ruler in June 1485.
