the world of private banking

GERmAN PRIVAtE BANKS AND GERmAN INDUStRy, 1830–1938 175
saved many of the banks from violent action by the radical mob, but they became
less important as a comparative business advantage, because from about 1937
the autarkic economic policy of the Third Reich made access to foreign capital
markets obsolete. Second, the ‘outside’ bankers’ consultative services were equally
no longer required. The Jewish private bankers lost many important supervisoryboard
seats, which seriously impaired their consultative capacity. More generally,
self-financing predominated and the capital and credit markets were highly
regulated, so that industrial companies only rarely had to decide between alternatives
in financial matters for which an independent adviser was needed. Third,
many customers had terminated their business relations with ‘Jewish banks’ as
they feared negative effects, especially if they were dependent on State orders.
By late 1938, when the ‘Aryanization’ of the German private banks was
completed, the result was that those private banks which were ‘Aryanized’ but
remained independent, such as M.M. Warburg & Co. (from 1941 Brinckmann,
Wirtz & Co.) and S. Hirschland (from 1938 Burkhardt & Co.), had already become
too weak to recover their former importance. None of the new proprietors entered
the top ranks in the bank-industry network of interlocking directorships. Only
those ‘gentile’ private banks which had ‘Aryanized’ a ‘Jewish’ bank by merger,
such as Hardy & Co. (itself purged of its Jewish managing directors) and Merck,
Finck & Co. kept their position. But with the exception of the leading Nazi banker
Kurt von Schröder (I.H. Stein, Cologne), hardly any private banker was playing a
leading role in the German economy when the war began. 49
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to show that private banking played an important role
for the mobilization of funds during the crucial period of early industrialization in
Germany. Several private bankers, particularly those from larger provincial towns
such as Cologne and Elberfeld, did not simply introduce the Crédit Mobilier style
of banks (and banking) into the ‘German’ economy, but played a decisive role in
the intermediation of funds, and at times even provided funds for industry and
transport from their own limited resources. By the mid-1850s, when the first jointstock
credit banks were founded, the basic railway network connecting almost all
important German Zollverein States was already built. By that time its aggregate
length (5,850 km by 1850) was second only to the British network.
49
A. Fischer, ‘Jüdische Privatbanken im “Dritten Reich” ’, in Scripta Mercaturae,
vol. 28, 1994, pp. 1–53, p. 38; C. Kopper, Zwischen Marktwirtschaft und Dirigismus:
Bankenpolitik im ‘Dritten Reich‘ 1933–1939 (Bonn, 1995), pp. 254–91; H. James,
Verbandspolitik im Nationalsozialismus. Von der Interessenvertretung zur Wirtschaftsgruppe:
Der Centralverband des deutschen Bank- und Bankiergewerbes 1932–1945 (Munich, 2001),
pp. 263–8; Ziegler, ‘Spezialisierungen’ pp. 36–45; Köhler, ‘Arisierung’, pp. 173–91.