Bank of German Labor
The Bank of Workers, Employees and Beamten AG , later Bank der Deutsche Arbeit AG , often referred to as Arbeitsbank , was originally a union- related bank based in Berlin .
history
Weimar Republic
In 1923 the General German Trade Union Federation and the General German Beamtenbund founded an investment company, the Deutsche Kapitalverwertungsgesellschaft mbH . The task of this company was the profitable investment of the funds of the trade unions. The background to the establishment was the hyperinflation in 1923 , which also destroyed the funds of the unions.
The bank for workers, salaried employees and civil servants was founded on May 31, 1924 from the Deutsche Kapitalverwertungsgesellschaft mbH as a trade union credit institution. The nominal ownership structure was complex. In addition to the Central Association of German Consumer Cooperatives, the publishing company of the DAGV and other union-owned companies were shareholders in the Bank of Workers, Employees and Officials. The bank expanded continuously. In 1930 it had 223 paying agents in 171 cities. Nevertheless, business policy remained cautious. It did not suffer any losses in the German banking crisis . The seat of the bank was the union building at Wallstrasse 65 in Berlin-Mitte.
The harmonization of the bank of workers, employees and civil servants
After Hitler's appointment as Chancellor and the seizure of power by the National Socialists, the unions began in early February 1933 to transfer assets abroad. Robert Ley ordered on 21 April 1933, his capacity as leader of the Action Committee for the Protection of German Labor to occupy the workers, employees and officials and the store manager into so-called SA and SS, not just the union offices, but also the paying agencies of the bank protective custody to to take. On May 2, 1933, the top management and those trade unionists who held papers were arrested. These were forced to transfer their shares to the trust company for economic enterprises of the German Labor Front (DAF). On May 12, 1933, Robert Ley was employed as the "caretaker" of the union assets. This appointed authorized representatives for the individual companies of the union assets. In the case of the Bank of Workers, Employees and Civil Servants, this was the banker Karl Müller, who became the bank's new chairman. Robert Ley became chairman of the board. Of the bank's 236 employees, 99 were laid off. This completed the synchronization of the institute. The expropriation of the last shares dragged on until 1935. The sole shareholder was now the DAF. On October 31, 1933, the name was changed to Bank der Deutsche Arbeit AG. In addition to the Bank of Workers, Employees and Officials, other union-affiliated banks also fell into the hands of the DAF. These were the bank of the Christian DGB , the Deutsche Volksbank , later renamed National Bank , the bank of the German national clerks association of German employees association Sparkasse (DAVS) and many smaller banks (e.g. Deutsche Werkmeister-Sparbank AG , the Industriebeamten-Sparbank eGmbH, the Deutsche Wirtschaftsbank or the Bank for German Labor and Sparbank von 1820 AG). At the end of 1933, a quarter of the shares in Deutsche Volksbank were sold to private owners, a third to the state-affiliated industrial bank and the rest to the Bank of Deutsche Arbeit. The following year the Bank of Deutsche Arbeit sold its share to companies from the Ruhr area. From December 24, 1934, the Bank of German Labor took over the payment transactions of the DAVS. In the following months, the DAVS accounts were gradually taken over by the Bank of Deutsche Arbeit. The other smaller banks were treated similarly. After completing these transactions, DAF's banking business was bundled in Bank der Deutsche Arbeit.
Further development in the time of National Socialism
From 1936 onwards, many industrial and banking holdings were sold and some new ones bought. From February 1939, the bank's head office was in Berlin, Unter den Linden and the corner of Neustädtische Kirchstrasse. In 1940 the "Ostdeutsche Privatbank AG " was acquired. In 1944 there were 53 branches in most of the larger German cities.
Significant subsidiaries were among others
- Bank voor Nederlandschen Arbeid NV, Amsterdam C, with branches in Rotterdam and Utrecht
- Westbank NV (Banque de l'Ouest SA), Brussels with a branch in Antwerp
In mid-1935, Karl Müller was ousted as chairman of the board and replaced by Carl Rosenhauer, who had been a member of the board since 1933. Rosenhauer, who, like Müller , joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 , remained chairman of the board of the Bank of Deutsche Arbeit until the end of 1942. Heinrich Simon was the “strong man” in the bank until the end of the Nazi era . In early 1943, Robert Lencer became chairman of the board. Lencer had become a board member in early January 1938.
The bank grew, like the other credit institutions, especially through the growth of savings deposits. A number of measures to promote savings by the National Socialists contributed to this. The KdF-Sparen (see Kraft durch Freude # Financing ) has been offered by the Arbeitsbank and the savings banks since 1934. In 1937 the Bank der Deutsche Arbeit had holdings of six million RM. More important was the volume of Volkswagen's savings . Up to the spring of 1945, 340,000 savers had saved more than 275 million RM here, the vast majority of which were invested in the Bank of German Labor. The Iron Savings Program accounted for 10% of savings in the 1940s. At the beginning of 1945 the Arbeitsbank received on paper the savings volume of the Ostarbeitersparens in the amount of more than 45 million RM. After Ukraine was occupied by the Red Army, the Central Economic Bank of Ukraine transferred these assets to the Bank of German Labor. In other saving support programs such as the German Farmers' savings account , the school savings , HJ-saving or home Save the bench was not involved.
Like the other banks, the Bank of German Labor was involved in the " Aryanization ". A study for the IHK Frankfurt am Main found that the Bank of German Labor was involved in "Aryanization financing" in a quarter of the cases. It played a particularly strong role in the Aryanization of the Reinhardt theaters : As the main creditor of the Deutsche National-Theater AG, it forced Max Reinhardt to sell his shares at a tenth of their value to the bank of workers, employees and civil servants. With the beginning of the war, the bank participated in the expropriation of the occupied territories. She appropriated the Vienna Dianabad in mid-1938 . In 1940 she took over the Danziger Privat-Actien-Bank .
End of the bench
The Bank of German Labor was closed in 1945 by the Soviet military government by SMAD order of August 14, 1945 and liquidated by the Sächsische Landesbank .
After the war, the tradition of trade union banking was continued through the Bank for the Common Economy .
Balance sheet figures
| year | Share capital and reserves | insoles | Total assets | Net income | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| all in all | savings | ||||
| 1925 | 0.75 | 9.4 | n / A | 51.0 | 0.2 |
| 1926 | 4.0 | 21.3 | n / A | 82.4 | 0.9 |
| 1927 | 4.0 | 36.1 | n / A | 169.3 | 0.9 |
| 1928 | 4.0 | 79.1 | n / A | 263.1 | 1.1 |
| 1929 | 12.0 | 117.4 | n / A | 358.0 | 2.1 |
| 1930 | 12.0 | 163.2 | n / A | 369.1 | 2.1 |
| 1931 | 12.0 | 167.9 | n / A | 302.0 | 0.6 |
| 1932 | 12.0 | 135.3 | n / A | 128.0 | 0 |
| 1933 | 12.0 | 83.2 | (80) | 156.0 | 0 |
| 1934 | 16.0 | 287.4 | (80) | 304.0 | 0.7 |
| 1935 | 24.1 | 285.5 | 80.8 | 311.1 | 0.8 |
| 1936 | 24.1 | 325.2 | 75.4 | 351.4 | 1.1 |
| 1937 | 34.1 | 402.6 | 80.7 | 440.0 | 1.3 |
| 1938 | 34.1 | 473.5 | 91.2 | 512.8 | 3.6 |
| 1939 | 36.0 | 890.1 | 98.7 | 917.6 | 0.6 |
| 1940 | 40.0 | 1751.4 | 129.9 | 1795.1 | 4.7 |
| 1941 | 40.0 | 2596.8 | 181.0 | 2653.6 | 1.0 |
| 1942 | 65.0 | 3605.8 | 280.2 | 3681.0 | 1.8 |
| 1943 | 65.0 | 4570.5 | 373.8 | 4657.7 | 2.0 |
| 1944 | 50.0 | 4821.2 | 511.5 | 5007.9 | |
| 1945 | 50.0 | 4380.7 | 525.6 | 4894.3 | |
The figures are given in millions of RM and refer to December 31 (for 1945: April 30). The values in brackets are estimates. Hachtmann states that the figures for 1932 and 1933 are contradictory; the official figures from DAF were used.
Web links
- Bank of Deutsche Arbeit AG, Leipzig branch In: State Archives Leipzig . Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- Christoph Kreutzmüller, Ingo Loose: The Bank of German Labor 1933–1945 - a National Socialist "Superbank"? Bank History Archive 2005, pp. 1–32
- Early documents and newspaper articles on the Bank of German Labor in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
literature
- Rüdiger Hachtmann: The economic empire of the German labor front 1933-1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2012 ISBN 978-3835310377 , pp. 93–190, 624–627.