Page 179 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Innkeepers in Tyrol

ry of individual innkeeper families and the findings in the source material
have made it clear that innkeepers are a particularly fascinating occupa-
tional group in the perhaps more specific context of Tyrol and present-day
South Tyrol, which was a transitional space between the dominant Italian-
speaking and the dominant German-speaking areas on a major transalpine
and trans-European trade route. On closer inspection, the combination of
innkeeper and merchant seems to have been relatively common here. Mo-
bility therefore plays a role in several respects: spatial mobility is evident
as a consequence of business activities, but also as a consequence of mar-
riage patterns. In addition, there is social mobility: inns as real estate and
businesses seem to have served as both a destination and a further starting
point for upward social mobility for their owners and/or the next genera-
tions.
A good example is Franz Anton Spängler (1705–1784), a wealthy eigh-
teenth-century cloth and silk mercer in Salzburg, who has been the sub-
ject of recent research by Reinhold Reith and his team at the University of
Salzburg. His descendants founded the Spängler banking house, which still
exists today. Franz Anton Spängler came from what is now South Tyrol,
from Dietenheim near Bruneck. He was the son of an innkeeper and wine
merchant. His family came from Sand in Taufers. Since 1677 the Spänglers
have had a coat of arms with two lions and grapes. Franz Anton Spängler
worked in Salzburg as an accountant or chief clerk at the Laimpruchersche
Faktorei. His social advancement came about through his marriage in 1733
to a widow and heiress, Maria Katharina Prötz, née Ingerl, who brought
the cloth and silk mercery into the marriage. This marriage was possible
because Spängler was already working in the same line of business. An
uncle of Franz Anton Spängler, Matthias Spängler, was a well-known and
wealthy merchant in Venice (Reith 2023; 2016). Thus, there was also a wider
familial context that testifies to the diversification of the range of activi-
ties among siblings from innkeeping families. Anton Spängler was one of
Salzburg’s wealthiest citizens. The inventory drawn up after his death in
1784 has been published; it comprises 46 densely written pages. After de-
ducting debts, his assets totalled 94,000 gulden.³
There was a strong inn culture in the German-speaking part of the his-
toric Tyrol. This suggests that they functioned as hubs of logistics and
infrastructure in transalpine trade and transit traffic, not only on the
main transit routes but also on secondary routes (Heiss 2001, 12). The

³ Reith (2015, 77–123); on the potential of merchant inventories, see Reith and Knapp (2021).

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