Wall charts, history and European Identity

The picture shows members of the Welser, a patrician banker and merchant family from Augsburg and Nurnberg. Since 1420 the family had a trading company and possessed foreign trading posts all over Europe (Spain, Portugal, Belgium, France, Italy, Dominican Republic). That way they accumulated enormous wealth and power. On the wall cahrt you can see a fleet, its crew and equipment financed by the Welser. Depicted are three-masted merchant vessels, anchoring off the coast of Venezuela; two rowboats are starting for the beach. In the year 1528 Charles V ceded the governorship of the Spanish overseas province Venezuela to the Augsburgian Welser Bartholomäus V. The German Welser explored and exploited America until they lost their mercantile rights when Charles V resigned in the year 1556.