The Frankfurter Bank was a German bank founded in 1854 in Frankfurt, which issued its own banknotes until 1901. On 1 January 1970, it merged with the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft to form Berliner Handels- und Frankfurter Bank, generally referred to as BHF Bank until 2007 and since then as ODDO BHF. [1]
The Frankfurter Bank was founded in 1854 to serve as a central bank for the then-autonomous Free City of Frankfurt, realizing a project that had long been under discussion but was accelerated by the nearby establishment of the Darmstädter Bank the previous year. [2] The bank was sponsored by local banking houses including M. A. Rothschild & Söhne, Bethmann Bank, and Grunelius & Co. , and authorized by the Frankfurt municipal council; the initial share subscription was oversubscribed 16 times, above all expectations. [3] Its first general manager was Wilhelm Isaac Gillé . The bank issued banknotes denominated in Guilders (German : Gulde), by then the monetary standard in the South German area of which Frankfurt was part. Together with the Bank of Bremen, it was viewed as more independent than most other note-issuing banks in Germany, which were generally under direct government control even when they were not government-owned. [4] : 192
The Frankfurter Bank's money did not have legal tender status but enjoyed solid reputation and was accepted beyond the boundaries of the city-state, even after the latter came to an end in 1866. In 1885, the sentence "The Frankfurter Bank in Frankfurt-am-Main has always had a particularly respected position in the commercial world" (German : "Eine besonders geachtete Stellung nahm in der kaufmännischen Welt von jeher die Frankfurter Bank in Frankfurt a. M. ein") was included in the Meyers Konversations-Lexikon phrasebook. [2] The Frankfurter Bank was allowed to keep issuing banknotes until 1901, even though this activity had become marginal following the establishment of the Reichsbank in 1875; the banknotes were finally withdrawn on 31 December 1901. [3]
The Frankfurter Bank was originally located at Münzgasse 2 in Frankfurt's historic city center. [5] In the late 19th century, it erected a palatial head office at Neue Mainzerstrasse 69, designed by architect Hermann Ritter . [6] That building was destroyed during World War II, then rebuilt in the 1950s on a streamlined monumental design. It was eventually demolished to make way for the Bürohaus an der Alten Oper skyscraper, erected in the early 1980s. [5]
In 1925, the State Bank of Prussia took a 10 percent equity stake in the Frankfurter Bank. [3] In 1946, on the joint initiative of surviving board member Hans Heinrich Hauck and former Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft (RKG) board member Hermann Jannsen, the bank was reorganized as a credit institution, and in the following years the Frankfurter Bank's management increasingly included former executives of the defunct RKG. [5] In 1962, the bank opened its first branch outside of Frankfurt. [3] It eventually merged with Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft, which after 1945 had also relocated to Frankfurt. [7]
The Reichsbank was the central bank of the German Empire from 1876 until the end of Nazi Germany in 1945.
Dresdner Bank AG was a German bank, founded in 1872 in Dresden, then headquartered in Berlin from 1884 to 1945 and in Frankfurt from 1963 onwards after a postwar hiatus. Long Germany's second-largest bank behind Deutsche Bank, it was eventually acquired by Commerzbank in May 2009.
The A. Schaaffhausen'scher Bankverein was a bank in Cologne, initially founded in 1791. In 1848 it was reorganized as a joint stock company; purchased in 1914 by the Berlin-based Disconto-Gesellschaft, and its brand finally disappeared in 1929 as the latter was in turn merged with Deutsche Bank.
Petra Roth is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). She was the Mayor of Frankfurt from 1995 to 2012. In addition she twice served as president of the Deutscher Städtetag, resuming her previous post there in 2009. The group is the head organization and lobby group for all German cities vis-à-vis the Cabinet of Germany, the German Bundestag, the Bundesrat of Germany, the European Union (EU) and many organizations.
Carl Fürstenberg was one of the most prominent German bankers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and was responsible for the revival of the German mining industry during his era.
The Bethmann family has been remarkable for the high proportion of its male members who succeeded at mercantile or financial endeavors. This family trait began in medieval northern Germany and continued with the Bethmann bank, which Johann Philipp Bethmann (1715–1793) and Simon Moritz Bethmann (1721–1782) founded in 1748 and soon catapulted into the foremost ranks of German and European banks. Even after the bank's sale in 1976, there are Bethmanns engaged in commercial real estate and forestry in the 21st century.
The Deutsch-Asiatische Bank was a foreign bank in Asia, founded in 1889 in Shanghai. Its principal activity was trade financing, but together with English and French banks, it also played a role in the underwriting of bonds for the Chinese government, issuing the Kiautschou Dollar and financing of railway construction in China.
The Darmstädter und Nationalbank, in shorthand Danat-Bank or Danatbank, was a large German joint-stock bank. It was formed in 1922 from the merger of the Bank für Handel und Industrie (Darmstadt), known as Darmstädter Bank, and the Nationalbank für Deutschland. Its failure in July 1931 was a significant episode of the European banking crisis of 1931.
The Disconto-Gesellschaft was a significant German bank, founded in Berlin in 1851. It was one of the largest German banking organizations until its 1929 merger into Deutsche Bank.
The Bank für Handel und Industrie in Darmstadt, often referred to as Darmstädter Bank, was a significant joint-stock bank in Germany, active from 1853 until its merger with Nationalbank für Deutschland to form Danat-Bank in 1922.
ODDO BHF is an independent Franco-German financial services group. It was created from the alliance of a French family-owned business built up by five generations of stockbrokers and a German bank specialising in Mittelstand companies. ODDO BHF operates in three main businesses: private banking, asset management, and corporate and investment banking.
The European banking crisis of 1931 was a major episode of financial instability that peaked with the collapse of several major banks in Austria and Germany, including Creditanstalt on 11 May 1931, Landesbank der Rheinprovinz on 11 July 1931, and Danat-Bank on 13 July 1931. It triggered the exit of Germany from the gold standard on 15 July 1931, followed by the UK on 19 September 1931, and extensive losses in the U.S. financial system that contributed to the Great Depression. The crisis has been widely associated with the subsequent rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and its eventual takeover of government in early 1933, as well as the emergence of Austrofascism in Austria and other authoritarian developments in Central Europe.
The Bank of Bremen was a German bank, founded in 1856 initially with the privilege to issue banknotes, which it lost in 1889. In 1895, it was acquired by Dresdner Bank but the brand name survived until 2010. It had branches in Bremen's districts Mitte, Neustadt, Utbremen, and Vegesack.
The Frankfurter Museums-Gesellschaft is a cultural association in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany, which is responsible for the Frankfurt museum concerts. It manages the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester, which is both the municipal orchestra of Frankfurt and the orchestra of the Oper Frankfurt. Concerts take place in the Alte Oper concert hall. The orchestra is regarded as an important German symphony orchestra.
The Bank of Prussia was the central bank of the Kingdom of Prussia. It was originally founded by Frederick the Great in 1765-1766 as the state-owned Prussian Royal Bank. In 1847, it was reorganized as a formally private-sector entity and renamed the Bank of Prussia. It operated until 1 January 1876, when it was succeeded by the newly created Reichsbank.
The German public banking sector represents a significant share of the broader banking sector in Germany. Unlike in most other Western and Central European countries, German public-sector banks have been present since the early phases of formalization of banking entities in the early modern period and have never lost their collective significance. They are typically referred to as one of the three “pillars” of the German banking system, the other two pillars being the cooperative banks and commercial banks.
The Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft was a significant German joint-stock bank, founded in 1856 in Berlin. It relocated to Frankfurt following World War II.
The Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft was a significant state-owned German bank, located in Berlin.
M. A. Rothschild & Söhne was a German family-controlled bank based in Frankfurt, formally founded in 1810 by Mayer Amschel Rothschild on the basis of the banking business he had developed since 1766. It was eventually liquidated in 1901.
The Bank of Baden was a German public bank founded in 1870, based in Mannheim until 1932 and from that date in Karlsruhe. It issued its own banknotes until 1935. In 1978, it merged with Württembergische Bank and private-sector Handelsbank Heilbronn to form Baden-Württembergische Bank, which in turn was merged in 2005 into Landesbank Baden-Württemberg.
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