Homburg Bank
The Landgräflich Hessische concessionierte Landesbank in Homburg , or Homburger Bank for short , was a private central bank in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg with its seat in Homburg before the height .
prehistory
In 1849 the issue of banknotes was discussed in Hessen-Homburg, but this plan was not implemented. On October 12, 1849, Minister of State Christian Bansa sent a "Promemoria about the project of issuing paper money ..." to the 3rd deputation of the landgraves' administration (finance and camera administration). The majority of the five members of the debt settlement commission spoke out against the project. The main reasons were concerns about the acceptance of the notes. In order to obtain a guarantee of acceptance by a renowned bank, the landgrave government had asked Amschel Mayer von Rothschild . Rothschild & Sons were only willing to do this in return for a pledge of the landgrave's table silver . The landgrave councilorJohann Wilhelm Zurbuch refused (some of the table silver had to be sold in 1849 and 1850 to close household holes ). Government director Ludwig Karl Wilhelm Henrich also pointed out that without a guarantee of acceptance, the circulation would be limited to the Landgraviate itself and that this would only ensure a small volume due to its small size.
Homburg Bank
By decree of December 12, 1854, Landgrave Ferdinand licensed the Frankfurt banker Raphael Erlanger with the establishment of a central bank in Homburg. Erlanger took over the pawnshop, which had existed since October 12, 1844 and which had an attractive clientele in the form of the Bad Homburg casino players .
The company was endowed with a capital of 1 million guilders and began operations on January 1, 1855 in the Louisenstrasse 30 building in Homburg. The bank had the right to issue banknotes up to the amount of the paid-in capital. Cover in cash was only necessary for a quarter of the total of the notes issued. These conditions were very generous compared to those of the other central banks. The banknotes were printed at the Naumann printing company in Frankfurt am Main .
At the end of 1857 a capital of 517,400 guilders had been paid up. However, banknotes in circulation were only 102,900 guilders and fell in the following years. At the end of January 1860 there were only 64,000 guilders in circulation. After Hessen-Homburg fell to Prussia in 1866 , banknote sales increased significantly. In 1872 the bank had fully paid-in capital of 1 million gold marks and banknotes in circulation of 500,000 marks .
With the Reichsbank Act of 1875, the bank was forced to renounce the central bank privilege (the concession of which would have run until 1906). On April 24, 1876, she finally gave up the right. It was continued as a commercial bank and subsidiary of the Frankfurt banking house Erlanger & Söhne . In 1904 Wilhelm Hermann Carl von Erlanger sold the Erlanger & Sons bank to Dresdner Bank . In 1929 the Homburger Bank was merged with the parent company Dresdner Bank.
swell
- Heinz Fengler: History of the German central banks before the introduction of the Mark currency, Regenstauf 1992, ISBN 3-924861-05-6 , page 77
- Ludwig Schreiner: Liberal Regulation - The Founding of the German Reichsbank ..., Dissertation 2004 ( online version , PDF )
Individual evidence
- ^ Marc Drechsler: A paper money project for the Landgraviate of Hessen-Homburg in 1949; In: Geldgeschichtliche Nachrichten, vol. 41, 2006, pages 117–121