the world of private banking

242
THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
Emperors Ferdinand III (1637–57) and Leopold I (1658–1705). 21 Dickson thinks
that the ‘permission given in 1653 and 1664 for Protestant widows to continue the
business of their husbands in Vienna implies that toleration was of long standing.’ 22
Protestant foreigners are found on the list of retailers all through the eighteenth
century and on those of the college of wholesalers in 1774. The edict creating this
institution in 1774 explicitly provided for the access of foreigners and Protestants.
Among them Steiner from Winterthur, Labhard, Ochs and Rieger from Basel,
Fries from Mühlhausen, Paldinger from Ödenburg, Wiesenhütter from Frankfurt
am Main and probably Castelmur from Graubünden can be definitely identified as
foreign Protestants. Under Joseph II (1765–1790) and later, the Protestants Fries
& Co. as well as Ochs & Geymuller were still the leading banking firms in Vienna,
together with Arnstein & Eskeles and Brentani Cimaroli.
With regard to the ‘Wiesenhütter & Co.’ firm, which had been started at Vienna
by Franz Wiesenhütter (1720–86), the eldest son of Johann Friedrich, a Protestant
banker from Frankfurt am Main, one must underline that its head became a
Catholic in 1743 and was made a Bohemian baron after his marriage with Maria
Elisabeth, the daughter of Baron Bertenstein. He was prominent as a banker of the
court only for a few years. He rapidly got into an impossible financial situation and
went bankrupt in 1746. 23
The Steiners were known as the main merchants in the salt trade from Austria
to South Germany and Switzerland in the seventeenth century. They were still
known in Vienna throughout the early eighteenth century. One of them entered in
1768 into the group of privileged retailers. In the same year, he created together
with Johann Christian Schuster the ‘Melchior Steiner & Co.’ firm. This firm was
not listed among the bankers of Vienna in 1774, but in 1779 actually raised an
important war loan for the Austrian crown in Holland. And his nephew Melchior
in 1816 became a director of the National Bank. 24
One of those who assumed a dominant role in government finance after 1750
was Johann Fries (1719–85). This Swiss Protestant banker from Mühlhausen
remained pre-eminent from his settlement in Vienna until his death. His strength
derived partly from his excellent foreign connections, particularly a close
relationship with bank houses in the Austrian Netherlands as well as with Dutch
and Italian correspondents. Dickson describes the ‘Freiherr von Friess & Co.’ as
responsible for a range and scale of official finance and contracting unknown since
the days of Samuel Oppenheimer in the late seventeenth century. Fries was the
eldest son of Philipp Jakob, who was in 1742–6 the town mayor of Mühlhausen.
‘In 1744 Johann entered the “English commissariat” charged with supplying the
21
For all details on the following developments at Vienna, see P.G.M. Dickson,
Finance and Government under Maria Theresa 1740–1780, 2 vols (Oxford, 1987), for
Toleration Patent, see especially vol. I, pp. 60–65.
22
Dickson, Finance, vol. I, p. 156.
23
Ibid., pp. 171–2.
24
Ibid., pp. 170–71.