the world of private banking

174
THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
(1919) and C. Schlesinger-Trier & Co. (1929) respectively. By the early 1930s
these amalgamated banks had become the two leading Frankfurt private banking
houses (as defined by this indicator) and had reached the ‘Top Ten’ of German
private banks. 46
The crisis of 1931 had changed the situation completely. No doubt the fact that
many private bankers had speculated in foreign exchange and in stocks backed
mainly by interbank loans was a major reason for the breakdown of several of the
leading private banks after 1931. But this is not the whole truth. The reluctance on
the part of the Reichsbank to refinance private banks during the banking crisis and
the one-sided Government aid for the great banks between 1931 and 1933 were at
least as important. The de facto State guarantee for great-bank deposits induced
many customers to turn their backs on their former house bank and reduced the
bankers’ liquidity even further. 47
While the banking crisis ended a period of remarkable stability for the leading
private banks, the crisis is not sufficient to explain the termination of the private
banks’ importance as a relevant component of the finance market as such. In
addition to the non-economic factor of one-sided State aid in favour of the great
banks, the final reason was purely political: anti-Semitism as an accepted factor in
business after the seizure of power by the National Socialists in January 1933.
From the early stages of industrialization, a majority of private bankers – not
to speak of the court bankers – was Jewish or at least of Jewish origins. Of the
leading twenty-five German private banks of 1933 (as defined by dividend payment
office namings) twenty-one were described as ‘Jewish’. As the period between the
outbreak of the crisis (July 1931) and the National Socialist seizure of power was
very short, it is not always possible to clearly identify the final reason for the
breakdown of a given bank. In some cases, such as A. Levy (Cologne), Hagen &
Co. (Berlin), Ephr. Meyer (Hanover) and Lazard, Speyer-Ellissen (Frankfurt), it
is quite probable that these banks would have had to be liquidated even without
the political changes. 48 But these cases are exceptions. The rest survived the
repercussions of the crisis, but were either liquidated (4) or ‘Aryanized’ (12)
between 1936 and 1938. The only exception was Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie., which
was labelled ‘Christian’ and survived until the final stage of the War on condition
that the Jewish partners (as defined by the Nuremberg Laws) left the bank and that
the bank was renamed Pferdmenges & Co.
When the forced ‘aryanization’ set in, the ‘Jewish’ banks had already lost their
former importance in many respects. First, the bankers’ international connections
46
Wixforth et al., ‘Privatbanken’, table 4, p. 220. See also R. Heilbrunn, Das Bankhaus
J. Dreyfus & Co. 1868–1939 (Frankfurt/Main,1962, Unpublished).
47
W. Winterstein, ‘Privatbanken‘, in H. Pohl (ed.), Das Bankwesen in Deutschland
und Spanien 1860–1960 (Frankfurt, 1997), p. 98.
48
Ziegler, ‘Spezialisierungen‘, p. 35; I. Köhler, Die ‘Arisierung’ der Privatbanken im
Dritten Reich: Verdrängung, Ausschaltung und die Frage der Wiedergutmachung (Munich,
2005), pp. 53ff.