Why are some companies better able to survive crises and other disruptive situations than others? The question of the ability of companies to survive in difficult times has been highly topical since the financial crisis of 2007 and later, but this problem has also arisen in history when times of significant economic, political and social upheaval have posed new challenges for companies. This was particularly the case during the commercialisation process in the ‘long’ sixteenth century, when the quantitative expansion of trade in terms of value, products and volume, in the context of European expansion, was accompanied by new logistical and financial challenges. The merchant-bankers of the Upper German high finance counteracted the resulting dangers and risks, which could increase the vulnerability of trading companies, in many cases with conscious resilience management, i.e. with strategic organisational and entrepreneurial measures that improved the adaptability of their companies to changing conditions and thus increased their resistance to crises.