Berlin trading company
The Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft was a bank founded in Berlin in 1856 . It played a significant role in industrial finance.
history
founding
The bank was founded on July 2, 1856 by important Prussian private banks such as S. Bleichröder , Breest & Gelpcke , Bankhaus Magnus , Mendelssohn & Co. and Sal. Oppenheim as a limited partnership based on shares . The young bank was mainly involved in the financing of railway construction in Germany , Austria-Hungary and Russia . After a few years, industry financing became more and more important.
Industrial bank
In 1883, Carl Fürstenberg , one of the great bankers of his time, took over the management of the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft. Fürstenberg turned the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft into one of the leading addresses for industrial finance, into an “industrial bank”, as he himself said. Close relationships were cultivated particularly with Emil Rathenau and the AEG . The main areas of activity of the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft in industrial finance were in Central Germany , Upper Silesia and then increasingly in the large industrial area on the Rhine and Ruhr (including Harpener Bergbau AG) .
The Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft belonged to the Prussian consortium . Thus she was involved in the issuance of government bonds by Prussia and the German Reich on a large scale . The issue of Russian government bonds was of great importance for the bank.
During the Weimar Republic, the bank retained its traditional ties to big industry. The company has had many of its business relationships for decades, especially those with AEG. Since Walther Rathenau was the owner of the business, it has been a tradition that the CEO of AEG chaired the board of directors of the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft. The bank built up a continuous stock exchange, foreign exchange and money business as well as a corporate lending business. Nevertheless, it did not lose its character as an issuing house for large-scale industry.
In 1931 it had around 550 employees and assets worth almost 370,000 million Reichsmarks. In the same year it made around 15 million Reichsmark gross profit and around 1.5 million Reichsmark net profit. In 1920 she took over the bank "William Rosenheim & Co.". In 1932 the business owners were Siegfried Bieber , Hans Fürstenberg, Otto Jeidels and Wilhelm Koeppel. In 1932 the board of directors included a. Hermann books , Max Warburg and Gottfried Dierig .
time of the nationalsocialism
With the death of Carl Fürstenberg on February 10, 1933, an era came to an end for the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft. As a result of the Nazi policy of increasing discrimination against Jews in Germany, three of the four business owners in 1933 lost their office. All three were able to leave Germany on time.
Development in the Federal Republic
After the Second World War , the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft, which had been one of the five major banks in Germany before the start of the war , resumed its work in Frankfurt am Main . The premises were made available to her by Frankfurter Bank until the BHG found a new home in its own new building in 1950. The advantage of BHG was that due to its strong industrial ties in the form of industrial holdings and other shares, it had been able to obtain significant values. The proximity to industry also became the decisive success factor for the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft during the reconstruction in the 1950s . The national and international issuing business again played a prominent role for them. There was also a considerable volume in asset management .
On January 1, 1970, the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft merged with the Frankfurter Bank to form the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft und Frankfurter Bank, soon known as BHF-Bank .
Personalities
BHG bankers often played an important role in German politics and economic history, including:
- Siegfried Bieber (owner from 1919–1935)
- Carl Fürstenberg (owner from 1883–1929)
- Eduard Mosler (owner 1904–1910)
- Walther Rathenau (owner from 1902–1907)
- Eduard Schulte , the BHG was his first job after graduating in 1913 (he later became known as an informant for the Allies about the Holocaust through mass gassing, as early as 1942). He left the bank in 1921 and then went into industry.
Web links
- Early documents and newspaper articles on the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Erich Erlenbach: An anniversary in the year of the golden mean. The Berliner Handels- und Frankfurter Bank celebrates 25 years of its history . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 12, 1980, p. 17.
- ^ Handbook of German stock corporations . Edition 1932, Volume 1, p. 11 ff.