Ulman Stromer

Ulman Stromer (1329–1407) was a Nuremberg merchant and councillor, son of the trader Heinrich Stromer. Trained in Barcelona, Genoa, Milan and Kraków, he began recording family, business and political events in his notebook in 1360, and in 1370 took over the family wholesale house, running a trade network from Barcelona to Riga and the Sea of Azov.

A councillor from 1371, in the Cities' War of 1387 to 1389 he brought Nuremberg into the Swabian-Rhenish League. In 1390 he converted the Gleissmühle into the first paper mill north of the Alps, bringing Italian papermakers north. He died of plague in 1407.