ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one institution, Deutsche Bank, that in a particular way took up general features of German organizational and social as well as economic development. The mid-nineteenth century and general legislation permitting the creation of joint stock companies allowed a different type of banking, in which partners were replaced by bank managers. The legislative framing of banking activity generally came very late. In the United States, the 1863 Banking Act talked about the “business of banking,” but did not clearly define it, with the consequence that legal scholars could only document the extent of confusion. The larger a bank becomes, the greater the challenges of performing all these simultaneous notions of what should be the functions of a bank. Deutsche Bank encapsulates many developments of German history in the 150 years since the creation of the German Empire. The Nazi movement, in power from January 1933, directed an intense criticism at banks.
