ABSTRACT
Before August 1914 German finance and banking were both integrated into the growing world economy. German export and import firms and overseas banks operated mainly through London, since the London stock exchange was the world’s most important financial centre. The Scandinavian countries were less important to German trade and banking than were the markets of Great Britain and the British Empire, Russia and France. However, local and regional ties went back to the early nineteenth century: Scandinavian trade passed to central and Southern Europe via Hamburg, Bremen and the German ports on the Baltic Sea. German and Scandinavian local banks, often seated in the smaller coastal towns, financed regional trade. Many loans to Scandinavian governments, cities and private enterprises, especially from Sweden and Denmark, were regularly issued by German banks on regional German stock exchanges. Some of the bigger joint-stock banks in Hamburg like the Norddeutsche Bank, or private banks like M.M. Warburg & Co (Hamburg), even specialized in Scandinavian business. Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank also participated in a consortium for international Scandinavian loans together with the Enskilda bank and the French Crédit Lyonnais, although French banks and French capital in general dominated the Scandinavian loan business.1
