Cologne banking

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The Cologne Banking developed during the already in the Middle Ages thriving business metropolis Cologne and made the town in the early days one of the leading German banking centers . Unter Sachsenhausen street acts as the center of the banking location . As early as the Middle Ages, Cologne financiers and bankers supported English kings beyond the city, and in the early days they played a key role in the industrialization and railway construction in Cologne and the Ruhr area .

middle Ages

As early as the 3rd century, the first bankers looked for Cologne as a location, because banking is closely linked to coinage . Cologne coinage began when Gallienus moved an imperial mint from Viminacium to Cologne in 257 AD . The move probably took place because, as a result of the massing of troops at the Rhine border, there was also a greater need for coins for pay payments . The former royal coin rack came into the possession of Cologne's Archbishop Bruno I , who had archbishopric pennies minted. The coin shelf has officially been in the power of the archbishop since 1027, and the Cologne mint on Heumarkt has been occupied since 1142 . Konrad von Hochstaden had Cologne denarii and other coins minted in 1251, which gained a large circulation area in the Central and Lower Rhine region. From around 1160 the Cologne denarius dominated the Middle Rhine and around 1250 it was the common coin throughout the Rhineland . On November 26, 1385, the establishment of the Rhenish Mint Association resulted in a fundamental reorganization of the Rhenish minting system, which had become of enormous importance for the monetary system in the late medieval empire. The Münzverein was created by four Rhenish electors from the Electoral Palatinate , Kurmainz , Kurtrier and Kurköln and had to watch over the circulating coins of the Cologne mark.

Brabanter Hof of Gerhard Unmaze - Am Hof ​​20–22 (watercolor pen drawing by Johann Jakob Merlo , 1874)

Gerhard Unmaze ("immoderate, immodest"; * before 1145, † January 21, 1198) was one of the best-documented and therefore best-known citizens of Cologne in the 12th century and an internationally active wholesale merchant and financier. His family was the largest landowner in Cologne. His inherited fortune enabled the city's highest customs master, who had been in office since 1169, to engage in long-distance trade and money lending. Unmace's core business was money lending , with debtors often pledging their property to him , often increasing his property holdings. In 1174 he granted a loan to Archbishop Philipp von Heinsberg of Cologne in the amount of 650 marks for his participation in Friedrich Barbarossa's fifth Italian campaign . As security, the archbishop pledged his lender Unmaze the city's customs rights and his house Am Hof ​​20-22, which passed into the possession of Unmazes at the latest in 1182. Unmaze put it together with the neighboring house belonging to him and now resided in the "Brabanter Hof" (also "Haus zur Krone") Am Hof ​​20-22, which is why he dropped his name Unmaze and called himself Gerhard vom Hof ​​(Gerardus de Curia). He held his office as customs master until 1196. Along with the mint masters Constantin and Lambert, he was part of the leadership of the consortium from 1197/1198, which lent money to the English crown under Richard I in 1197 . After Gerhard's death, his large house came into the possession of Theodorich des Vogts and Winemar des Schenk.

In the Middle Ages, a credit economy in Cologne developed, which was first run by Jews and then also by Lombard bankers, because both were not subject to the interest ban . The Florentine banker Aringus Abadinghi already lent money to Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden, as evidenced by a request for repayment by Pope Innocent IV on October 4, 1250. The oldest Cologne bankers were Jews, whose monopoly-like position was documented around 1266. Because in the year 1266 Archbishop Engelbert II. Von Falkenburg enforced that "Kawertschen" and other Christians , who lent interest-bearing loans and thus annoyed the Jews, were not allowed to stay in the city. On September 27, 1296, however, the city concluded an agreement with Lombard money dealers, according to which they were allowed to stay in Cologne for 25 years and only demand the usual interest on money loans in return. The earliest settlement of Lombards on German soil is attested to in Cologne, where they appear sporadically towards the end of the 12th century in the shrine book of the Laurentius parish as well as in the guild and citizen lists, more often not until 1296. Their heyday began with Opicinus Grasverdi and son Hennekinus Rotarius, which Archbishop Heinrich II of Virneburg allowed from April 10, 1306 to operate money-lending businesses in Kempen .

Cologne merchants founded a guild hall in London in 1157 as the Cologne Hanseatic League , which King Heinrich II defended in 1176. It was one of the primordial cells of the later Hanseatic League , which brought the city an enormous increase in supra-regional trade, which also spurred the banking sector. At the first Hanseatic Day in Lübeck in February 1356 with 80 Hanseatic cities present, Cologne was not yet represented. For the first time - and also for the last time - the city hosted a Hanseatic Day between November 11 and 22, 1367 in today's "Hansa Hall " of the town hall . With the Cologne Confederation decided here on November 19, 1367, a military alliance was created for the war against Denmark and Norway in order to force the passage through the Sound.

The first Cologne banking companies came into being in the 13th century, when the city had 40,000 inhabitants. At that time, Cologne was of great importance as a transshipment point in the exchange of goods between the states of north-western Europe and the south, which brought with it a lively exchange business . Its central location on the Rhine with the large Rhine ports and its proximity to Belgium and the Netherlands promoted trade and thus trade financing through exchange business and currency exchange. The city of Cologne took its first known loan in 1321 from the Rheinbach Jews Joseph von Ahrweiler and Salomon von Basel (Salman Unkel), who were granted customs at the Bayenturm . Both were house owners in Cologne's Jewish quarter.

The Cologne patrician Heinrich Scherfgin granted the first major international loan to Eduard III on August 11, 1338 . who had been imperial governor on the left Lower Rhine since September 5, 1338 . Sherfgin had stayed in England for a long time and was therefore known to the king. Edward III. quartered himself at Scherfgin's "Hof Polene" in August / September 1338. On January 29, 1339, Edward III. for the Hundred Years War with France from the Cologne patricians Heinrich Quattermarkt, Everhard Hardevust, Hilger von Stave and others, additional loans amounting to 5,000 guilders, for which he had to pledge valuable items. The Cologne patrician families Jabach and Hackeney are also associated with banking, although there is evidence that they did not run pure banking houses in Cologne. Rather, financial transactions arose in their lively international trading activity, which, however, did not justify the designation as banking transactions. The Cologne representative of the Medici Bank, Simon Sassolini, lent the city a total of 40,000 guilders in 1415; he was followed by banker Abel Kalthof from 1448 to 1450. Since the turn of the 15th century, Cologne gained importance as a financial center .

Cologne's banking industry experienced a new boom after the Thirty Years' War . When Johann Wolter de Beche came to Cologne in 1636, he founded a shipping company and an exchange bank. It was followed by Johann Jakob von Wittgenstein , Hubert Fechter and Josef Wilhelm Wecus, who had been in the forwarding and commission business since 1797 at the latest. Meyer zum Goldstein (Meir Katz) appeared as the first court factor under Archbishop Joseph Clemens of Bavaria in 1696, who until 1701 had to pay tribute to the electoral court chamber. During the 18th century, Cologne's banking system played only a subordinate role after Frankfurt, Vienna, Augsburg, Berlin and Hamburg.

The establishment of the " Banco di gyro d'affrancatione " was proposed on March 2, 1705 by Elector Johann Wilhelm II and was considered the first bank of notes in the empire. It issued the first means of payment in the form of bank notes in Germany. The word "affrancation" stood for debt relief or loan repayment . The bank was intended to "remedy the financial embarrassment caused by the war and to satisfy the many creditors". He determined that the deposit and note bank should have its seat in the "Heylig Roman Empire freyer instead of Cöllen". On March 27, 1705, "Jan Willem" issued the diploma for the bank statute; after that their activities ceased for the time being. Only on April 30, 1706 was a "bank instruction" issued naming the organs , on May 5, 1706 Willem demanded ten times the amount payable in 10 years from the deputies instead of the originally required subscription of 106,000 thalers each. In 1706 the first bank notes came into circulation. The bank resided at Hohe Pforte No. 23-25, where the Cologne court banker Johann Heinrich Sybertz (or Siebertz) redeemed the banco notes for “Cölln auf der Hohen Pforten”. The "Banco di gyro d'affrancatione" is likely to have been liquidated during the French era ; the last archived files date from 1804.

French period

Herstatt Bank - Hohe Pforte 25–27 (around 1900)

The brothers Johann David Herstatt (* 1740, † 1809) and Jakob Herstatt (* 1743, † 1811) founded the bank ID Herstatt (Cologne, Hohe Pforte 25-27 ) in 1782 , which emerged from a silk and foil ribbon weaving mill. Johann David Herstatt is mentioned for the first time as a banker in the minutes of the Council of Cologne on January 27, 1792. The Herstatt-Bank was involved in real estate transactions from secularization together with the A. Schaafhausen'schen Bankverein during the French era . It was not until 1815 that only banking business was carried out, in particular the exchange of goods and current account credit . Bank customers were the mining, iron processing and textile industries in the region. Since 1818 there was a cooperation between the Herstatt Bank and the Cologne private banks JH Stein and A. Schaafhausen'scher Bankverein. Herstatt had a business relationship with Friedrich Krupp AG since 1834 . When Friedrich Johann David Herstatt died early of pneumonia on January 17, 1888, his only son Johann David (born March 27, 1887 in Cologne, † November 4, 1955 there) was only just under 1 year old - the family chain of transmission to the oldest Son had stopped working. In the absence of descendants, the ID Herstatt bank was taken over and liquidated by the JH Stein bank on March 15, 1888 after more than 100 years of business.

Bank JH Stein - Laurenzplatz 1–3 (1912)

The banking house JH Stein itself started in 1790 as a combined trading and banking house. In March 1794, the owner Johann Heinrich Stein , together with Hubert Krings and Johann Jacob Werotte from Namur , invested 4,000 thalers in the Niederweßlinger (today: Wesseling ) red tannery and leather trade. The general ledger of the parent company JH Stein, which began on January 1, 1801, listed 500 bank customers, the equity of the parent company rose from 10,000 to 200,000 thalers in the period from 1802 to 1820. The exchange business became increasingly important for Stein since 1814, and in 1818 the bank participated in the founding of the Rheinschiffahrts-Assekuranz-Gesellschaft , the predecessor of Agrippina insurance . In March 1836 Stein participated in the founding of the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft together with Schaaffhausen, Oppenheim and Herstatt. A capital increase in April 1839 could only be marketed slowly by the banks due to the economic situation and brought them into financial difficulties until Belgium took over the unsold 4,000 shares in April 1840.

In 1791 the trading house Abraham Schaaffhausen opened , which in addition to trading, freight forwarding and real estate business also operated banking . The owner was Abraham Schaaffhausen , who with his bank A. Schaaffhausen'scher Bankverein was one of the first and most important sources of finance for the growing Rhenish - Westphalian heavy industry . The A. Schaaffhausen'sche Bankverein was one of the three most successful private banks in Cologne, along with the JH Stein and Herstatt Bank . It was of great importance for the industrial and transport development of the entire Rhineland. By 1837 at the latest, the bank had been one of the industry's most important financiers. At that time it gave credit to around 170 factories, including companies such as Krupp , Hoesch , the Gutehoffnungshütte and the Eschweiler Mining Association . The investment loans granted by Eberhard Hoesch & Söhne in 1836 for the construction of the rail rolling mill in Düren-Lendersdorf probably came from the Schaaffhausen bank. On July 16, 1839, Schaaffhausen was again one of the founding banks of the Cologne Fire Insurance Company (later COLONIA Versicherung ). She was also involved in infrastructure projects, for example in 1843 in the financing of the Cologne-Minden Railway Company . On November 1, 1848, the bank association opened in the legal form of an AG, making it the first joint stock company in Germany.

One of the first Jewish immigrants in Cologne was Salomon Oppenheim , who had been court factor and exchange agent in Bonn since 1789. The first domicile for the Sal. Oppenheim bank, which moved to Cologne in 1798 , was the building Am Hof No. 2122 (today No. 16) rented by the wine vinegar manufacturer GJ Hahn between 1801 and 1808 . In January 1808 Oppenheim acquired the patrician house Große Budengasse No. 8 (later No. 8-10) from the former mayor Baron Franz Jakob von Hilgers . As early as 1810, Oppenheim rose to become the second largest bank in Cologne after A. Schaaffhausen. Since the 1820s, the bank has financed, in particular, shipping on the Rhine and later also the development of railway construction and the industrialization of the Rhine Province and the Ruhr area. Oppenheim, together with the Berlin bank Mendelssohn & Co., carried out the transfer of the French war reparations to Prussia, which the Aachen Congress had decided in November 1818. Also in 1818 was the co-founding of the Rheinschifffahrts-Assekuranz (forerunner of Agrippina insurance ), on October 3rd, 1825 the co-founding of the "Preußisch-Rheinische Dampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft" (forerunner of the Cologne-Düsseldorfer Deutsche Rheinschiffahrt ). Oppenheim participated in consortia of the Cologne private banks, which consisted alternately of Deichmann & Co., A. Schaaffhausen'scher Bankverein, Bankhaus JH Stein, Herstatt and the Bankhaus A. Levy & Co. and largely financed the Rhenish-Westphalian heavy industry.

Founding period

The Cologne Stock Exchange on Heumarkt (1827)

Until 1820, loans to trading houses made up the largest share of the Cologne banks' lending business. After that, loans to industry came first. Cologne private bankers successfully operated universal banking as early as the 1830s . In contrast to the Frankfurt bankers, who focused on government bonds , the Cologne private banks focused on trade loans and, from 1820 on, industrial financing in the textile and mining industry and railway construction. Hamburg's banks were dedicated to foreign trade finance , while Berlin's banks were involved in industrial finance and the securities business . While the Cologne banks played a key role in industrial financing in the Ruhr area, with a few exceptions they were only interested in the financing of those railway lines that led to Cologne or that benefited Cologne's economy. In the field of industrial finance, syndicated and issuing business , Cologne's banking system was second in Germany after Berlin. The growing capital requirement of the coal and steel industry in the Ruhr area around 1850 in the amount of 100 million thalers also caused a considerable structural change in Cologne's banking system with the establishment of joint stock banks and the increasing weight of the newly emerging Berlin banking system, resulting in a decline in the importance of the private banks located there.

Some 18th century Cologne banking houses emerged from industrial companies or were directly connected to them, and until the end of the Seven Years' War they kept the imperial city as the source of finance for the Rhenish state finances. The capital for the banking business came primarily from the industrial companies operating in parallel. These banks acted as electoral court bankers in Cologne and belonged to Johann Peter von Meinertzhagen, Wilhelm von Hack, Simon Pel (t) zer, Mathias von Frantz and Wilhelm von Recklinghausen. There is evidence that von Meinertzhagen started banking as early as 1629. As the first, the von Hack house withdrew soon after the middle of the century into the Bergisch industry it was familiar with, followed by JD von Recklinghausen before 1794, and Mathias von Frantz's banking house collapsed in 1775. Simon Peltzer's banking business ended around 1800, while the oldest and most powerful von Meinertzhagen kept the banking business until 1812.

On January 1, 1826, the “Sparkasse zu Köln” was separated from the poor administration and became an independent institution under public law with the city of Cologne as guarantor . At the end of the first financial year there were 87 savers with 4,800 marks in deposits. The Stadtsparkasse has been authorized to accept ward money since November 21, 1899, and cashless payment transactions are introduced at the Stadtsparkasse on March 30, 1907 . On February 3, 1911, the Stadtsparkasse introduced the check and giro business, including the current account credit . This corresponded to the needs of the medium-sized economy and the liberal professions; At the end of 1911 there were already 674 accounts with 1.4 million marks deposits.

Wilhelm Ludwig Deichmann came to Cologne in 1818, where he started at Schaafhausen. Here he was promoted to bank manager on March 1, 1830. Under his leadership, the bank achieved a decisive share in the industrialization of West Germany. In December 1857 he resigned to set up his own bank. On January 1, 1858, the Deichmann & Co. banking house began with partner Adolph vom Rath . Deichmann was particularly involved in industrial finance. It replaced the Herstatt bank as the house bank of Friedrich Krupp AG. In 1862 Deichmann played a key role in the development of the locomotive manufacturer Henschel & Sohn . Banker Adolph vom Rath made the bank into one of the founding banks of Deutsche Bank in 1870.

The Rheinische Provinzial-Hülfskasse was founded in Cologne on March 14th, 1853 and started its business on February 7th, 1854. It supported the economic development of the Rhine Province into a modern industrial state. In addition, she was active in the municipal loan business and granted long-term loans to the city of Cologne and surrounding communities in the Rhineland. After relocating to Düsseldorf on July 10, 1877 , the bank, renamed Landesbank der Rheinprovinz , founded a branch in Cologne on November 1, 1919 , from which WestLB Cologne emerged.

The oldest legal predecessor of today's Kreissparkasse Köln is the "Sparkasse für die Bürgermeisterei Wipperfürth", which began its activity on September 20, 1853. As a result, it expanded its business area through mergers and transfers in the region. The "Kreissparkasse Mülheim am Rhein", which had existed since 1856, merged with the "Savings and Loan Fund of the District of Cologne", which had existed since February 1, 1869, to become the "Kreissparkasse der Landkreise Köln und Mülheim" in the form of a special purpose association . Their first financial year was dominated by the collapse of the German currency and the introduction of the Rentenmark on November 15, 1923. In April 1945, the military government approved the resumption of business operations at the Kreissparkasse Köln. After the Korean crisis in September 1950, deposits began to grow steadily as increasing employment and real income contributed to savings. The lending business improved at the same time due to increasing construction financing and commercial loans for Cologne's medium- sized businesses . The new headquarters at Neumarkt No. 16-24 planned by Walter Dietz could already be partially occupied in 1950 and fully occupied in 1952. In November 1953, the expanded ticket hall was put into operation.

A number of smaller banks rounded off the Cologne banking market. The brothers August & Ludolf Camphausen decided in 1826 to found a Cologne bank branch and moved to Cologne in 1831 because of the growing importance of this branch. Here the Camphausen bank rose to become the fourth largest bank in Cologne. Jacob Seydlitz & Peter Heinrich Merkens founded a trading company as early as 1808, which exclusively operated banking business around 1850 ("Seydlitz & Merkens"), but went into liquidation in 1870 . Since April 1845 the "Kölnische Privatbank" ("Kölnische Bank-Gesellschaft") sought a banking license , which it was denied for a long time. It was not until December 10, 1855 that the bank , which had a share capital of 1 million thalers, received approval, and A. Schaaffhausen'sche Bankverein was in charge of founding it. It was a central bank that existed until 1887. The private bank Jacob Loeb Eltzbacher & Co. was established in 1857, and Leopold Seligmann opened a Cologne branch of his banking house , which was founded in Koblenz in 1811 and was founded by Moritz Seligmann and his brothers Jakob and Heinrich, in 1868 . Albert Simon & Co. began in 1869 and became the payment point in the vending machine business of the Cologne chocolate factory Stollwerck .

Unter Sachsenhausen 4 - A. Schaafhausen'scher Bankverein (around 1896)

The founder of A. Levy & Co. was Abraham Levy-Löb (* 1797), who worked as a cashier at the Cologne bank Sal. Oppenheim around 1840. He rose to become an independent stockbroker and in 1858 founded a modest banking business under the name A. Levy . His son Hermann Abraham Levy (1825–1873) continued the banking business during his short life. His eldest son Louis, born in 1855, took his wife's maiden name after the wedding in 1893 and was henceforth Louis Hagen . From 1873 he led the bank to the top of the German private banks and became known for his many supervisory board mandates. In May 1898 he put together a bank consortium which financed the establishment of the Kölner Land- und Seekabelwerke AG with a 50 percent stake . The Cologne banker also played a decisive role in the merger of the Hörder Bergwerks- und Hütten-Verein with Phoenix AG for mining and smelting operations (1906). Louis Hagens Bank was connected to the United Steelworks van der Zypen & Wissener Eisenhütten AG, Eschweiler Bergwerksverein and Felten & Guilleaume. In 1904, Levybank initiated the community of interests between A. Schaaffhausen'schen Bankverein and Dresdner Bank, ensured the merger of Kölnische Maschinenbau-AG with Berlin-Anhalter-Maschinenfabrik (May 1909), Carlswerk AG with AEG (1915) or for the affiliation of the “Nordstern” and “Zollverein” collieries. A. Levy & Co. rose to the Reich loan consortium in 1926 and was thus one of the first bank addresses in the Reich. In 1927 Louis Hagen headed the list of mandate holders (corporations with at least RM 500,000 share capital) throughout Germany with 58 mandates. Carl Theodor Deichmann was in fourth place with 26 mandates.

Unter Sachsenhausen 1–3 - Reichsbank (around 1900)

By 1857, Cologne banks, including in particular the Schaaffhausensche Bankverein, Herstatt and Oppenheim, had invested around 25 million talers in Westphalian industrial financing. Gustav Mevissen had a splendid commercial building built for the Schaaffhausen bank from 1859 onwards, thus laying the foundation for Cologne's Unter Sachsenhausen banking street. The axially symmetrical building, opened on August 22nd, 1863, showed palatial features with an Italian renaissance. The bank remained an independent bank until 1929. The oldest surviving bank building is today the Reichsbank building by Max Hasak (Unter Sachsenhausen 1–3), built between 1894 and 1897 , whose Gothic architecture shows a more Middle and Upper Rhine character due to its red sandstone. On January 1, 1876, the Reichsbank established its headquarters for the Rhine Province in Cologne, which moved into the Unter Sachsenhausen 1–3 structure supported by granite columns on May 4, 1897. Cross-marriages within families were typical of Schaaffhausen, Levy, Stein, Oppenheim and Herstatt. The generation successor as a banker in the mostly large banking families came from the eldest son, who often married the daughter of another banker family. This also applied to all other children. This led to a strong, also business bond between the banks, which was particularly evident in bank consortia.

The “Cologne advance payment and credit association e. G. ”was created on October 27, 1861 by several master craftsmen, who took on the legal form of a registered cooperative due to the Prussian cooperative law passed in March 1867 . The founders included the factory owner Ernst Schmidts (Cologne-Lindenthal), the master locksmith Heinrich Engelskirchen (Cologne), the building trade master Josef Steinkrüger (Cologne) and the chief guild master Gustav Pesch (Cologne-Ehrenfeld). From March 16, 1869 it was called “Kölner Gewerbebank e. G. “, it was converted into an AG in September 1923. The liquidation of the AG was decided on May 5, 1925, and the bank returned to its original name (GmbH). In 1960 the name was changed to “ Kölner Bank von 1867 e. G. “instead.

The only 24-year-old Gustav Horn founded the scandal rich on September 12, 1872 Rheinische Effect Bank , among others, with Dortmunder Union Brewery -Aktien speculated and their losses through bills of exchange and embezzlement offsetting of client funds. Their liquidation took place in May 1875. Horn was indicted, found guilty on 13 of 15 counts in August 1876 and sentenced to three years in prison. As on 1 January 1873 the Cologne Stock Exchange began trading shares first with local values, the Cologne banks could place the securities emissions of its customers directly through the local stock market and buy from there shares. Their price list from 1898 listed 51 domestic and foreign funds, 25 bank, 28 insurance shares and 50 mining and smelter shares.

statistics

Employees in finance at German financial centers 1882–1907:

Financial center (year) employees
total 		Employed
credit institutions 		Employed
insurance companies
Berlin (1882) 517.150 5,589 1,410
Berlin (1895) 765.348 6,663 2,706
Berlin (1907) 1,061,088 9,168 6.374
Frankfurt am Main (1882) 53,088 1,837 285
Frankfurt am Main (1895) 93,620 1.917 749
Frankfurt am Main (1907) 144.932 2,655 1,327
Hamburg (1882) 128.089 1,154 532
Hamburg (1895) 271,369 2,101 1.991
Hamburg (1907) 397.914 3,281 3,540
Cologne (1882) 61,522 418 321
Cologne (1895) 135.423 613 880
Cologne (1907) 198.127 964 1,685

Berlin remained the leading financial center in the period between 1882 and 1907 , followed by Hamburg , which was only able to overtake Frankfurt from 1895 .

Modern times

The major banks Deutsche Bank , Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank set up main branches in Cologne from 1914 . With the takeover of Bergisch-Märkische Bank in 1914, Deutsche Bank also got a branch in Cologne, which was later expanded to become the head office for the Cologne region. On October 18, 1917, the legal predecessor of today's Pax-Bank , the "Citizens' Association of Cologne" began. In October 1967, it operated for the first time under its current name Pax-Bank eG. In 1919 the bank Delbrück von der Heydt & Co. was founded , which moved into the old city ​​palace at Am Römerturm 3 , built by Johann Peter Weyer in 1835 . Between September 1921 and February 1923, the bank trained a 20-year-old young man who broke off his studies in economics after one semester: Hermann Josef Abs . The banking house Carl M. Götte was established in 1926, on June 28, 1991, under somewhat strange circumstances, a payment moratorium was imposed. During the subsequent settlement proceedings, however, it turned out that there was no bankruptcy offense. The small bank existed until January 2012.

The German banking crisis of June 1931 did not spare Cologne's banking system either. Banks were hit hard by the withdrawal of deposits, especially by foreign investors, while the mostly long-term loans refinanced with them were not repaid. The resulting insolvency led to corporate crises at many Cologne banks. Simon Alfred von Oppenheim therefore decided in January 1931 to hire Robert Pferdmenges as a partner in the Sal. Oppenheim banking house. After the Landesbank der Rheinprovinz stopped its payments on July 11, 1931, the Deichmann & Co. bank filed for bankruptcy on September 24, 1931 due to insolvency. In the aftermath, the Levy bank had to be finally liquidated on January 10, 1939.

statistics

Employees in the financial sector at German financial centers 1950–2003:

Financial center (year) employees
total 		Employed
credit institutions 		Employed
insurance companies
Frankfurt am Main (1950) 296,403 6,931 1,291
Frankfurt am Main (1961) 486.496 18,134 8,059
Frankfurt am Main (1970) 538.473 28,037 12,224
Frankfurt am Main (1987) 529.271 40,671 8,872
Frankfurt am Main (1999) 472.718 58,317 7,748
Frankfurt am Main (2003) 473.227 58,368 7,587
Düsseldorf (1950) 248.005 4,197 3,068
Dusseldorf (1961) 415,927 12,086 7,404
Dusseldorf (1970) 432,324 16,073 8,161
Düsseldorf (1987) 385.256 18,450 8,480
Düsseldorf (1999) 346.943 18,044 10,798
Düsseldorf (2003) 338.795 17,915 10,260
Cologne (1950) 277.474 3,331 5,142
Cologne (1961) 460,627 8,948 12,095
Cologne (1970) 483.230 11.001 18,866
Cologne (1987) 457.680 13,404 19,611
Cologne (1999) 455.192 15,396 22,456
Cologne (2003) 449.258 13,952 26,295

It was not until 1961 that Frankfurt am Main became the most important German financial center and was able to overtake Hamburg and Munich. Munich has always been the most important insurance center; in 2003, Cologne led the insurance industry, even ahead of Munich.

The Jewish banks were badly affected by Aryanization during the Nazi era , so that from 1933 these banks were either liquidated or had to be taken over by German owners. The Jewish bank Sternfeld & Tiefenthal, founded in Cologne in 1885, became the Hocker & Co. bank due to Aryanization in 1938, which was taken over by the Cologne banker's son Iwan David Herstatt in June 1955 after the death of the owner Hans Hocker († April 22, 1954) . His bank , which has been operating under the name Bankhaus ID Herstatt since December 10, 1955 , initially expanded into retail banking , before moving into proprietary trading from 1971 onwards.

In 1950 there were 22 credit institutions in Cologne with 47 branches. This reflects the upswing in Cologne's large-scale industry ( Ford Germany , Bayer AG , Deutz AG , Strabag , A. Nattermann & Cie. ), Trade ( Kaufhof , Rewe Group ), the media ( M. DuMont Schauberg , WDR , Deutschlandfunk , Deutsche Wave ) and the increasing purchasing power of the population. The connection between Cologne's banks and neighboring European countries is a result of Cologne's position in international trade in goods. The brisk reconstruction also spawned mortgage banks. The first Cologne mortgage bank was “Rheinboden” in 1894, the mortgage banks “Centralboden” and “Westboden” took up their domicile on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring after the war . In 1951, “Centralboden” moved its headquarters from Oldenburg to No. 27-29, while “Westboden” moved into Cologne's first new bank building in No. 17-21 in 1952. In 1952 the Westdeutsche Kreditbank für Baufinanzierung was added, which was taken over by the Deutsche Bank in 1987 and merged into the Deutsche Bank in 1988 as the Deutsche Kreditbank für Baufinanzierung . On January 2, 1956, the Herstatt Bank began its business operations in Unter Sachsenhausen No. 29–31. The bank expanded rapidly and in 1963 moved to the newly constructed building at No. 6-8.

  • Deutsche Bank Cologne (August 2009)

  • Bank Sal. Oppenheim (March 2010)

  • Merck Finck & Co. Private Bankers (August 2009)

The importance of the Cologne banks and their great tradition contributed to the fact that the management of the very financially strong big banks did not get lost in a "centrally controlled" formalism and that there was never an exaggerated centralism in Berlin. On July 11, 1956, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer proposed that the headquarters of the Bundesbank be relocated to Cologne. However, he was unable to assert himself against Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard and their legal predecessor Bank deutscher Länder . Since February 23, 1957, the University of Cologne has had a chair in banking management , the first in Germany, with the "Institute for Banking and Banking Law at the University of Cologne" . Some Cologne banks were connected to the institute as sponsors. From 1964 the branch banks and savings banks covered the city area with a dense branch network, because in 1969 there were 71 Cologne institutes with 237 branches. The Herstatt Bank gained worldwide fame through its spectacular closure on June 26, 1974 at the latest, it turned out to be the largest bank failure in Germany since the end of the war. Herstatt was the first Cologne private bank to make intensive use of international banking connections due to its proprietary trading. At the same time, it was firmly rooted in Cologne's bank customers, including many celebrities from business, politics and the media.

The Sal. Oppenheim bank rose to become Europe's largest private bank, and since July 1947 it has been run by members of the Oppenheim family again . Her clientele in private banking consisted exclusively of wealthy private clients, some of whom did not come from the Cologne region. The joint venture with that of Josef Esch in 1992 initiated Oppenheim-Esch Holding GbR mediated these high net worth individuals as a tax-subsidized investment , some in real estate funds introduced core properties , many of which ran into economic difficulties. The bank was also financially involved with Arcandor , which filed for bankruptcy in June 2009 . Esch also made the bank the largest creditor of Madeleine Schickedanz , who also got into a financial crisis. These high banking risks resulted in a loss in the billions that the bank could not cope with. It was therefore taken over by Deutsche Bank in October 2009. Another consequence was a wave of lawsuits from former bank customers that the former personally liable partners of the bank and Esch had to face since February 2012.

Some mergers in Cologne's banking system led to savings banks merging with institutions in neighboring cities. These include the Kreissparkasse Köln , which has been one of the largest savings banks since June 1996 through mergers with savings banks located exclusively on the right bank of the Rhine, and the Stadtsparkasse Köln , which became one of the largest savings banks in Germany through the merger with Sparkasse Bonn in January 2005. In May 2017, the Kölner Bank merged with the Volksbank Bonn Rhein-Sieg retrospectively as of January 1, 2017 to form the Volksbank Köln Bonn eG, after both representative assemblies had approved in May 2017. While the legal seat is in Bonn, the business seat of the merged Volksbank is in Cologne.

After Sal. Oppenheim was taken over by Deutsche Bank in October 2009, private banks such as Merck Finck & Co (since June 2002), Fürst Fugger Privatbank (November 2009) and HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt (October 2010) established branches in Cologne. The J. Safra Sarasin closed her opened in September 2011 establishment in 2014 again. Also, the Bank Vontobel and the Hanseatic Bank withdrew from Cologne. In private banking, the competition for around 250 millionaires in Cologne is particularly intense. Cologne banks now serve customers based in the region between Aachen and Gummersbach and between Monheim am Rhein and Trier . While there were 68 credit institutions in Cologne with almost 1,000 branches and around 9,900 employees in 2013, in 2018 there were only 53 credit institutions with around 8,300 employees. At the same time, the number of employees in the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce fell from around 14,000 in 2013 to around 12,000 in 2019. Cologne is one of the most important locations for car banks , and all other types of banks are also represented at the Cologne banking center. Among them are the branches of major banks and two major financial institutions as universal banks , private banks , specialized banks , a development bank and a branch of the Bundesbank . In the area around Unter Sachsenhausen alone there are 11 banks or bank-related institutes.

literature

  • Klara van Eyll : Cologne banks in the 19th century and the influence on the industrialization of the Rhine province. In: Communications from the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and Industry (28), 1973, pp. 250–258 and 274–280
  • Wilfried Feldenkirchen, Cologne Banks and the Development of the Ruhr Area. In: Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 27, 1982, pp. 39–81
  • Uwe Perlitz, Money, Banking and Insurance in Cologne 1700-1815 , 1998.

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