Palm Bush Bank

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Palmstruch Bank
Palmstruchska banks
Headquarters Stockholm , Sweden
founding 1656
Dissolution / merger 1667
country Sweden
successor

Swedish Reichsbank ( 1668 )

List of central banks

Palmstruch Bank (Swedish: Palmstruchska banken ; also Stockholms Banco ) was founded in 1656 by Johan Palmstruch and is considered the first central bank in the world.

Art

The Palmstruch Bank was an exchange and lending bank modeled on the German and Dutch banks. Johan Palmstruch financed the Swedish national budget and in return was given the right to set up his own bank and lend money. He had to give 50% of the income to the Treasury .

History of the bank

A “Creditif-Zedel” from 1663

Johan Wittmacher was born in Riga in 1611 as the son of the merchant Reinholdt Wittmacher and traveled as a young man to Amsterdam , where he developed an extensive business until he was arrested in 1639. It is said to have been about unpaid debts. He was only released in 1646 and moved to Sweden the following year. There he was raised to the nobility in 1651 with the name Palmstruch. In 1656 he then founded the Palmstruch Bank, which was long considered the world's oldest central bank. Johan Palmstruch issued the first paper money on July 16, 1661 . Until then, Sweden's money consisted of large, unwieldy copper coins that could weigh up to 19.75 kg. In 1668, at the time of the Swedish copper crisis , the bank went bankrupt , as holders of the banknotes demanded the equivalent in gold in view of falling banknotes , whereby it turned out that the precious metal reserves of the bank were insufficient to cover the notes in circulation. Palmstruch was sentenced to death in 1669 . The sentence was soon converted into a prison sentence, from which Palmstruch was released shortly before his death.

Individual evidence

  1. Stockholms Banco 1657–1668: Johan Palmstruch (Witmacker) (1611–1671) historiesajten.se
  2. Ulrich Bindseil: Central Banking before 1800: A Rehabilitation . Oxford University Press, 2019, ISBN 978-0-19-258992-7 ( com.ph [accessed May 30, 2020]).
  3. ^ Deutsche Welle calendar sheet
  4. One of the first banknotes in Europe, with handwritten signatures by Johan Palmstruch and his colleagues, alvin-record: 79932