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The Schwarzenberg Bank: A Forgotten Contributor to Austrian Economic Development, 1788–1830

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Herman Freudenberger
Herman Freudenberger
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus of Economics, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118–5698.
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Extract

The supposedly authoritativeÖsterreichisches Staatswörterbuch (1905 edition) states unequivocally that the only joint-stock bank that existed before 1850 was a land bank founded in 1841 by the Galician estates. März, who has written the definitive work on the Credit-Anstalt, also found no place in his otherwise excellent study for the Schwarzenberg Bank, asserting that the Credit-Anstalt was founded simply on the model of the Crédit Mobilier of contemporary France. The only publication that concerned itself with the Schwarzenberg Bank, formally known as the Wiener oktroyirte Commerzial-, Leih- und Wechselbank (Chartered Commercial, Loan, and Exchange Bank of Vienna) in some detail was written in 1918, with the observation that it strongly resembled the Crédit Mobilier type of bank. This work was obviously ignored both in Austria and elsewhere where the history of banking and banks has been discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 27 , January 1996 , pp. 41 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1996

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