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

这项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加剧的战争经济是否也标志着第一次世界大战结束后继续存在的银行业立法的一个分水岭，并成为魏玛共和国经济秩序的一部分。该项目询问魏玛共和国金融和银行的结构性变化在多大程度上植根于战争经济的立法和经济政策。最重要的公共金融机构--帝国所有的德国帝国银行和德国帝国银行(Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft AG)--将分别考察结构变革的不同阶段。因此，研究战略将集中在从第一次世界大战结束到1931年夏天德国银行体系崩溃期间，帝国-克雷迪特-格塞尔斯哈夫特的商业战略及其与私营银行，特别是柏林私人大银行的竞争(或合作)。在过去的十到二十年里，德国银行业史学几乎完全局限于第三帝国时期金融机构的作用。然而，本项目打算分析德国银行业的结构变化和当时的典型问题，这些问题是由于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，以及最后与赔偿和外债有关的债务危机造成的。本研究的实证基础是德国帝国银行的记录，该银行在货币改革后成为德国的大银行之一，在魏玛共和国的黄金时代，它不仅为国家和国有工业发挥了重要作用，也为私营部门发挥了重要作用。这些记录存放在柏林的德国档案馆。因此，调查期的重点将是从恶性通货膨胀结束到1931年的银行业危机。在这方面，该项目将提供关于德国在魏玛共和国的银行政策的大量数据和解释。但此外，它对纳粹时期的德国银行业史学也将是重要的，因为该项目将澄清纳粹银行政策的先决条件，这家机构不仅被国有化，而且是一家在民主政府下多年来履行其任务的国有机构。因此，德国帝国银行和德国帝国银行在魏玛共和国时期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该项目进行了研究，主管研究人员已在多篇文章中发表了部分研究结果。

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.