the world of private banking
the world of private banking
the world of private banking
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PROtEStANt bANKING 241<br />
Protestant Banking During Early Modern Times in Some O<strong>the</strong>r Catholic<br />
Countries<br />
In Germany 19 <strong>the</strong> most important merchant bankers like <strong>the</strong> Fuggers, Welsers,<br />
Höchstetters and Imh<strong>of</strong>fs remained Catholic after <strong>the</strong> Reformation. We do not<br />
have much information on Protestant firms doing <strong>the</strong>ir business in <strong>the</strong> sixteenth<br />
and early seventeenth centuries mainly in Catholic towns or countries, except for<br />
<strong>the</strong> Lu<strong>the</strong>ran Rehlinger merchant bank which acted in and out <strong>of</strong> Augsburg. The<br />
Rehlingers were related to German and Italian firms at Venice and Antwerp in<br />
<strong>the</strong> sixteenth century, and additionally in Piacenza and Lyons in <strong>the</strong> seventeenth<br />
century. They made loans to <strong>the</strong> courts <strong>of</strong> Austria, Spain and England. In <strong>the</strong><br />
early seventeenth century <strong>the</strong>y orientated <strong>the</strong>ir investments more to <strong>the</strong> Protestant<br />
low countries with shares in <strong>the</strong> ‘East-India Company’ in Amsterdam and <strong>the</strong><br />
‘West-India Company’ in Rotterdam. During <strong>the</strong> Thirty Years War, Max Conrad<br />
Rehlinger (1575–1642) got into difficulties because <strong>of</strong> his Protestant partisanship.<br />
He fled in 1629 to Bern just before being outlawed by <strong>the</strong> Emperor. With <strong>the</strong> part<br />
<strong>of</strong> his wealth he had saved from confiscation he continued to advance money to<br />
<strong>the</strong> Protestant faction. He died in 1642 at Geneva, where he had become influential<br />
in Protestant international <strong>banking</strong>. After his death, his son Ferdinand (1619–87)<br />
lived and worked in Lyons in 1643–9 and <strong>the</strong>n returned to Germany, but without<br />
continuing his career as a merchant banker.<br />
In <strong>the</strong> later eighteenth century we find more Protestant German merchant<br />
bankers doing <strong>the</strong>ir business in Catholic countries, e.g. members <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Metzler<br />
and Bethmann families from Frankfurt in Bordeaux and Vienna. 20 The <strong>banking</strong><br />
house <strong>of</strong> Johann Philipp Bethmann was also an innovator, using <strong>the</strong> technique <strong>of</strong><br />
<strong>the</strong> partial obligation to float more than fifty bond issues in Austria with a total sum<br />
<strong>of</strong> 38 million Austrian florins by <strong>the</strong> last decades <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> eighteenth century. One<br />
may now ask <strong>the</strong> reasons for <strong>the</strong> <strong>of</strong>fering <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se lucrative activities to a Protestant<br />
<strong>banking</strong> firm. One must admit that some tolerance was given to <strong>the</strong>m under <strong>the</strong><br />
Leboyer, ‘Les banques européennes et l’industrialisation internationale dans la première<br />
moitié du XIXe siècle’, in P. Léon (ed.), Histoire économique et sociale du monde, vol. III,<br />
L’avènement de l’ère industrielle (1789-années 1850), vol. 1 (Paris, 1976); H. Großkreuz,<br />
Privatkapital und Kanalbau in Frankreich 1814–1848: Eine Fallstudie zur Rolle der Banken<br />
in der französischen Industrialisierung, Schriften zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte,<br />
vol. 28 (Berlin, 1977); L. Bergeron, Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du<br />
Directoire à l’Empire (Paris, 1978); M. Körner, ‘Banquiers et financiers suisses en France’,<br />
in Marchés et Techniques Financières, vol. 12, 1989, p. 40; F. Baudequin, ‘Clavière’, in<br />
Marchés et Techniques Financières, vol. 12, 1989, pp. 42–3.<br />
19<br />
For more information on <strong>banking</strong> in Germany, see E. Klein, Deutsche<br />
Bankengeschichte, vol. 1, Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des alten Reiches (1806)<br />
(Frankfurt, 1992).<br />
20<br />
Klein, Bankengeschichte, pp. 246–56.