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Aufsätze
Ulrich Lappenküper
Otto Bismarck und Emma Metzler 1851–1880
It is just as well known that Otto von Bismarck enjoyed his term as Prussia’s representative to the Diet of the German Confederation in Frankfurt from 1851 to 1859 as perhaps the most pleasant phase of his political activities, as is his intervention on behalf of Frankfurt in the course of its annexation by Prussia in 1866/67. Largely unknown on the other mehr...
hand, is the role that a banker’s wife, Emma Metzler, played in his politics during these very historical years. Based on the correspondence preserved in the Bismarck archives, the paper illuminates this episode in his life story for the first time and embeds it in the history of his relationship with Emma Metzler and the Frankfurt banking world from the beginning of the 1850s through the end of 1870s. Even though the pomp and pageantry of the formal diners and balls were not in keeping with his lifestyle, Bismarck considered the regular evening contacts with influential figures from politics, business and culture to be among his primary duties. Emma Metzler, who ran one of the most-renowned salons in Frankfurt, performed a special role for Bismarck here, and she maintained contact with him after his work with the German Confederation ended until his her death in 1880, primarily through correspondence. Even if the letters from the later Minister President and Reich Chancellor show long periods of diplomatic ‘silences’, they bear witness to great familiarity, sometimes even of amorous undertones. Whether Bismarck viewed her as a female companion, or Emma saw herself so, is in dispute. However, as he did not close his mind to her urgings to protect Frankfurt, even in what was likely the most difficult time of their friendship following the war against Austria, and afterward was also ready to meet her privately, at least sporadically, to Bismarck, Emma Metzler may well have been more than just the representative of an interest group “of the influential business class” (Ellinor Schweighöfer).
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Ralf Stremmel
Zwischen Partei und Bank: Max Albert Schlitter (1894–1973)
So far, little is known about second- and third-tier bank managers. Max Albert Schlitter (1894–1973) belonged to this group. As director of ‘Deutsche Bank’, he headed its branch in Bochum. Even before Hitler was appointed chancellor, Schlitter had joined the NSDAP. After 1933, he climbed the ranks and became president of the Chamber of Commerce mehr...
and Industry in Bochum. However, his career came to an abrupt end when he was accused of fraud. This article investigates how Schlitter positioned himself between political party and bank, and why he, eventually, did not manage to convert his economic assets into social and cultural ones.
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Anna Grodecka / Marcin Markowski
Banknotes as a Symbol of Economic and National Power
A Case Study of German, French and Italian Banknotes in the 19th and First Half of the 20th Century
Banknotes and their design play an important role in creating a nation’s identity. This paper analyzes the design of German, French and Italian banknotes in the period after the formation of national states in the 19th century until the outbreak of World War II. We take into account the economic development of these countries and relate it to banknote mehr...
issuance. Our analysis reveals that the banknote design in German states mirrored the economic conditions of the country, whereas such a relation is not observed in France or Italy.
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Dieter Verbeck
Einführung, Nutzung und Verdrängung von Bargeld in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Eine historische Überblicksanalyse über deutsches Bargeld seit der DM-Währungsreform 1948 bis zur Nutzungseinschränkungs- und Abschaffungsdiskussion im Jahre 2016
This paper gives a chronological overview of the payment methods used in the Federal Republic of Germany from the currency reform of June 20, 1948, up to the recent decision to eliminate the 500-euro banknote and the implementation of a statutorily defined upper limit of 5,000 euros for cash payments. The goal of the presentation is to trace the historical mehr...
development of the use of cash and to illustrate the reasons a displacement of cash has developed, as well as its advantages and disadvantages. It will also investigate the influences through which cash payments, previously taken for granted, have been gradually displaced by other payment media. As a result of increasing combined private household income with increasing options for saving, a very important customer group arose in the 1950’s and 1960’s, whose regular wage and salary deposits to giro accounts at banks significantly displaced the necessity of cash payments because demand deposits could be made by account or bank transfer. Starting at the end of the 1960’s, the Eurocheque, which acquired a significant role in the point-of-sale retail trade, led to a further displacement of cash. The paper-linked Eurocheque was displaced by card-based, non-cash payment forms and completely discontinued in 2001. With the increasing maturity of near field communication, new mobile or internet-based payment systems are currently establishing themselves, but which are not yet able to gain general acceptance because various systems are competing with one another. Impacts on use of cash are to be expected when one of the competing methods can gain acceptance with consumers over the mid- to long-term. The consequences of a possible limitation on the use of cash to be introduced cannot currently be forecast for Germany. In view of the affinity for cash that Germans have had for decades and a number of advantages that do not reside in the economic arena, but have rather a psychological, sociological or pedagogical background, an elimination of cash cannot be expected in the foreseeable future.
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Miszellen
Laura Herr
Jakob Riesser – Bankier, Politiker und Wissenschaftler
The concentration process in the banking system that set in no later than in the second half of the 19th century in the German Reich brought about a lively academic debate among economists. Writings from differing political and economic perspectives took up the topic and the prevailing consensus was that the concentration was a natural and inexorable mehr...
component of the capitalistic economic process. Still among the decisive works of the literature of the period that arose from this debate is ‘Die deutschen Großbanken und ihre Konzentration im Zusammenhang mit der Entwicklung der Gesamtwirtschaft in Deutschland’ (‘The German Great Banks and Their Concentration in Connection with the Economic Development of Germany’) by Jakob Riesser, which first appeared in 1905. In this work, Riesser, who already in 1900/01 was among the prime initiators of the founding of the ‘Centralverband des Deutschen Bank- und Bankiergewerbes’ (‘Central Association of the German Banking and Financing Industry’), criticized the Reich’s restrictive banking legislation, among other things. This paper analyzes and interprets, for the first time, Riesser’s letters from the turn of the century. These letters are a great starting point to deal with the work and life of Jakob Rieser.
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Boris Gehlen
Bausparkassen – eine (typisch) deutsche Finanzinnovation?
The ‘Bausparkassen’ (building and loan associations) were innovations through adaption in the Schumpeterian sense because they created a new combination of existing lending and residential housing principles. From the housing market, the ‘Bausparkassen’ took over the subordinated building loan as a business principle; from the banking mehr...
industry it took the longterm lending business of mortgage and savings banks; also from the latter, regular savings; in addition, the long-term and mathematically-based accumulation of wealth from life insurance companies, and the principle of collective self-help from cooperatives. The innovation was ‘typically German’ insofar as the adopted principles had been constitutive for individual segments of the financial market. It was hence also ‘typically German’ because the juxtaposition of public and private providers was a characteristic feature of the German financial markets. And it was hence ‘typically German’ because it transformed along existing regulatory paths and assimilated into a market that was coordinated less by competition than by agreement between providers, demanders and the state and which was integrated in welfare state aims. From a historical viewpoint, at least two ‘German’ phenomena were defining for the ‘Bausparkasse’ innovation. First, the traditionally low home ownership rate, and second, the destruction of real capital in the world wars and the destruction of monetary capital in the subsequent inflationary periods.
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