the world of private banking

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THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
companies were only very reluctantly granted, banking concessions were almost
always rejected until the 1860s. 22
A major exception was the Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank,
founded in 1835. This bank, a combination of mortgage bank, discount house
and bank of issue was founded on the initiative of the Bavarian King. At first, the
Munich and Augsburg bankers, including the court banker Simon von Eichthal,
were not prepared to subscribe the bank’s capital, but the King succeeded in
interesting the Frankfurt banker Carl von Rothschild and thus forced all major
Bavarian bankers to join the initiative. Eichthal even became one of the bank’s
two honorary directors. 23
Occasionally, joint-stock banks were founded by the conversion of existing
private banking houses – in some cases because the family business with its limited
resources could no longer withstand their customers’ demand for capital and credit
and in some cases because the family was no longer in a position to supply able
successors when senior partners retired. Two examples are outstanding. The
Bayerische Vereinsbank was founded by taking over the business of the leading
Munich bank, Robert von Froelich & Co. (formerly known as A.E. von Eichthal), 24
and the Dresdner Bank was established by the conversion of the Dresden private
bank Michael Kaskel. Kaskel was one of the very few successors of former court
Jews who successfully transformed their business not only into State financing,
but also towards granting credits to modern industry and transport. Carl Kaskel,
a brother-in-law of Simon Oppenheim, had also been a railway promoter and
became the supervisory-board chairman of the Austrian Aussig-Teplitzer Railway
Company. As in many other cases, the successor problem determined the fate of
this bank too. The family decided to join the Dresden banking house Gutmann
and to convert the business into a joint-stock bank. Although Gutmann had been
a much smaller bank, it had recently overcome the generation break thanks to
an able and enterprising young family member, Eugen Gutmann. While the
senior member of the Kaskel family, Felix Kaskel, was elected supervisory-board
chairman, Gutmann became a member of the Dresdner Bank executive board; 25 he
kept the position as head of the bank for more than forty years.
22
J.M. Brophy, Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia 1830–1970 (Columbus,
1998), pp. 87–106.
23
F. Jungmann-Stadler, ‘Die Gründung der Bayerischen Hypotheken- und
Wechselbank 1834/35’, in Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, vol. 60, 1997, pp.
889–924, here p. 920.
24
M. Pohl, Konzentration im deutschen Bankwesen (1848–1980) (Frankfurt/Main,
1982), p. 39.
25
J. Kaskel, ‘Vom Hoffaktor zur Dresdner Bank: Die Unternehmerfamilie Kaskel im 18.
und 19. Jahrhundert‘, in Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte, vol. 28, 1983, pp. 159–87,
here p. 162; D. Ziegler, ‘Eugen Gutmann – Unternehmer und Großbürger‘, in Eugen-Gutmann-
Gesellschaft – Gründungsversammlung (Frankfurt/Main, 2003, unpublished), p. 23.