Banking Policy and Economic Order in the Weimar Republic: The Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft 1919-1931

拟议的研究项目旨在研究在德国，最初由1916年兴登堡计划发起的强化战争经济是否也标志着银行立法的分水岭，该立法在第一次世界大战结束后继续存在，并成为魏玛共和国经济秩序的重要组成部分。该项目询问在何种程度上的结构性变化，在金融和银行在魏玛共和国植根于战争经济的立法和经济政策。本章将分别考察最重要的公共金融机构-德国国有的Reichskreditgesellschaft mbH和Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft AG（因1923年重建而得名）-结构变化的不同阶段。因此，研究策略将侧重于帝国信贷公司的商业战略及其与私营部门银行，特别是私营柏林大银行的竞争（或合作），从第一次世界大战结束到1931年夏天德国银行体系崩溃。在过去的10 ~ 20年里，德国银行史学几乎只限于研究金融机构在第三赖希中的作用。然而，本项目旨在分析德国银行业的结构变化和典型问题，这些问题是由第一次世界大战后的复员、战后通货膨胀和旨在稳定货币的货币改革以及最终与赔偿和外债有关的债务危机造成的。本研究的经验基础是帝国信贷公司的记录，它在货币改革后成为德国最大的银行之一，在魏玛共和国的黄金时代，它不仅为国家和国有工业，而且为私营部门发挥了重要作用。这些记录存放在柏林的联邦档案馆。因此，调查的重点将是从恶性通货膨胀结束到1931年银行危机。在这方面，该项目将提供有关德国银行业在魏玛共和国的政策的大量数据和解释。但此外，它对纳粹时期的德国银行史学也很重要，因为该项目将澄清纳粹银行政策的先决条件，该机构不仅被国有化，而且是一个在民主政府下多年来履行其任务的国有机构。因此，魏玛共和国时期的Reichskreditgesellschaft mbH和Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft AG的历史，是了解该银行在纳粹时期历史的必要前提，最近的一个研究项目已经对此进行了研究，其结果的一部分已经由负责研究的研究人员发表在一些文章中。

The proposed research project intends to examine whether in Germany the intensified war economy, originally initiated by the Hindenburg program of 1916, also marked a watershed in banking legislation which continued after the end of World War I and which became part and parcel of the economic order of the Weimar Republic. The project asks to what extent structural changes in finance and banking in the Weimar Republic rooted in the legislation und economic policy of the war economy. The different stages of structural change will be examined for the most important public financial institution, the Reich-owned Reichskreditgesellschaft mbH and the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft AG (as it was named after its reconstruction in 1923) respectively. The research strategy will therefore focus on the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschafts business strategies and its competition (or cooperation) with the private sector banks, the private Berlin great banks in particular, from the end of World War I until the collapse of the German banking system in summer 1931. During the last ten to twenty years German banking historiography has confined itself almost exclusively to the role of financial institutions in the Third Reich. This projects, however, intends to analyze the structural changes and the problems typical of the time in German banking, caused by the demobilization after the First World War, the post-war inflation and the monetary reforms aiming at currency stabilization thereafter and finally the debt crisis in connection with reparations and foreign indebtedness. The empirical basis for this study are the records of the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft which became one of the German great banks after the currency reforms and which performed an important function not only for the state and the state-owned industry, but also for the private sector during the Golden Age of the Weimar Republic. These records are deposited in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. The period of investigation will therefore have a focus from the end of the hyperinflation until the banking crisis of 1931. In this respect the project will deliver substantial data and interpretations on German banking policy in the Weimar Republic. But moreover, it will also be important for the German banking historiography of the Nazi period, as the project will clarify the preconditions of Nazi banking policy by an institution that was not only just nationalized, but by a state owned institution that had performed its tasks for years under a democratic government. The history of the Reichskreditgesellschaft mbH and the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft AG respectively during the Weimar Republic is thus a necessary precondition for understanding the history of this bank during the Nazi period which has already been examined by a recent research project the results of which have already partly been published in a number of articles by the researcher in charge.