Bank Meyer & Co.

Bankhaus Meyer & Co. in Thomaskirchhof 20, architectural drawing by Peter Dybwad

Thomaskirchhof 20 in an advertising brochure for the fashion house Schüler from 1937

The bank Meyer & Co. was a private bank in Leipzig . It existed for over 130 years after it was founded in 1814 and was the only private bank in the GDR between 1952 and its final dissolution in the course of the "last wave of East German expropriation in 1972" .

history

In 1814, the Jewish merchant Joel Meyer received approval to set up a bill of exchange business. He ran the business together with his son Alexis Meyer (1787–1869). The company headquarters was at Brühl . Since 1823 the company name was Meyer und Co. Although all branches of the banking business were served, the main business area was textiles and tobacco products .

After Alexis Meyer went to Berlin in 1840 to open another bank under the same name, his son Max Meyer took over management in Leipzig. Bankhaus Meyer was part of the German banking consortium that prepared the Dresdner Bank from 1872. This consortium also included the Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt, where Max Mayer was also a member of the board of directors. As a result, he was also elected to the Supervisory Board of Dresdner Bank AG on December 1, 1872. In 1887 he left the Meyer bank and handed the management over to his two sons Oskar and Paul Meyer.

The bank was also involved in the cultural field and funded scholarships. The owner was also the treasurer of the Gewandhaus . In 1887 the bank became a limited partnership . In 1905 the architect Peter Dybwad built a new business building at Thomaskirchhof 20 / corner of Dittrichring.

In 1919 the lawyer Wilhelm Schomburgk became co-owners of the bank through marriage to the Meyer family. During the Second World War, Schomburgk took part in the civil resistance surrounding Mayor Carl Friedrich Goerdeler . In 1945 the credit institute was closed by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD). Schomburgk was allowed to continue running the bank with a deductible of RM 300,000 from 1946 as a private bank Meyer & Co. under the supervision and control of the Saxon Landesbank , and after 1950 the Deutsche Investitionsbank. This last private bank in the GDR was wound up in 1972.

The Leipzig branch of Deutsche Außenhandelsbank AG was located in the business premises of the bank at Thomaskirchhof until it was closed in 1990 . After that, a restaurant was housed in the rooms. In the basement of the house there is a walk-in safe , built by Carl Kästner AG Leipzig. In the early 1990s, the building was temporarily part of the property in Leipzig owned by the building contractor Jürgen Schneider .

literature

• Frank Zschaler: The banking house Meyer & Co. in Leipzig. A Saxon banking family between 1814 and 1972. In: Ulrich Heß, Michael Schäfer, Werner Bramke , Petra Listewnik (eds.): Entrepreneurs in Saxony. Rise - Crisis - Fall - New Beginning (= Leipzig studies for the research of regional identification processes. Volume 4). Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-933240-21-2 , pp. 253-269.
• Maximilian Elsner von der Malsburg: “Aryanization” of private banks using the example of the EJ Meyer bank in Berlin . Verlag Peter Lang 2014, ISBN 978-3-631-66040-9 . Zugl. Dissertation, University of Regensburg 2013 and Legal History Series , Volume 453.

Web links

• Bankhaus Meyer & Co., Leipzig. In: State Archives Leipzig . Retrieved February 20, 2018 . 
• Private bank Meyer & Co., Leipzig. In: State Archives Leipzig. Retrieved February 20, 2018 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Frank Zschaler: The banking house Meyer & Co. in Leipzig. A Saxon banking family between 1814 and 1972. (p. 256)
2. ^ Michael Schäfer, Ulrich Hess: Entrepreneurs in Saxony: Rise - Crisis - Fall - New Beginning . Leipziger Uni-Vlg, 1993, ISBN 3-933240-21-2 , p. 257 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
3. ↑ Juliane Gölzner: Bankhaus Meyer & Co. In: Discover Leipzig. Retrieved February 19, 2018 . 
4. ^ Dresdner Bank. In: The Berlin issuing houses and their issues in the years 1871 and 1872. A commentary on the Berlin route slip. Verlag Fr. Lobeck (P. Anders), 1873, p. 31.
5. ↑ "Schneider Objects" in Leipzig City. Retrieved October 3, 2019 . 
6. ↑ www.uni-regensburg.de ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (pdf)