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this activity had become marginal following the establishment of the Reichsbank in 1875; the banknotes were finally withdrawn on 31 December 1901.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 Reich from 1 January 1876 until liquidation in 1945.
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Commerzbank AG is a global German universal bank headquartered at Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt. The bank was founded in Hamburg in 1870 and is today among the largest credit institutions in Germany, with total assets of €534 billion as of the end of September 2022. With over 15 percent ownership, the Government of Germany is the bank's biggest shareholder.
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Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (DAB) 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 and in the 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 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.
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The Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft was a significant state-owned German bank, located in Berlin.
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