ABSTRACT
It is hardly surprising that the stories of banks mostly deal with monetary institutions, which can look back on a relatively long existence. A very trivial reason for this circumstance might be the fact that only successful, and thus ‘long-living’, banks get to celebrate anniversaries, which in return, usually lead to corresponding anniversary publications.1 The manufacture of such a Festschrift, as long as it was not written by journalists but by historians, has the positive side effect that – next to the expected self-presentation of the banking establishment – historical sources of the bank’s foundation and development are fitted together. In the most favourable cases those documents were collected and permanently preserved in archives particularly established for this purpose. Afterwards, these sources are made available for publications that satisfy scientific criteria. In this way financial historians, in particular, helped to preserve the long lasting influence of credit institutions in the historic memory.2
