Funding: Frankfurter Sparkasse and Polytechnische Gesellschaft
The project examines, on the one hand, the involvement of savings banks and other banks in the economic persecution and social exclusion of Jews in the city of Frankfurt am Main, and, on the other hand, the history of Frankfurt’s Polytechnic Society (Polytechnische Gesellschaft) during National Socialism.
With regard to savings banks and banks, the first part of the project researched by Friederike Sattler, the focus is on three aspects: firstly, the treatment of Jewish employees by credit institutions; secondly, their involvement in the »Aryanization« of commercial assets and real estate belonging to Jewish customers; and thirdly, the role of credit institutions as an extension of the state financial administration in the confiscation of Jewish assets for the benefit of the German Reich. Based on the two Frankfurt-based savings banks, Frankfurter Sparkasse von 1822, which was founded by the Polytechnische Gesellschaft as a »free savings bank«, and the Städtische Sparkasse Frankfurt, which was added in 1895 as a municipal savings bank when the town of Bockenheim was incorporated into the city, comparisons are drawn with the branches of the big banks and other credit institutions of importance to Frankfurt, including, not least, Jewish-run private banks. The question of what contribution savings banks and banks made to restitution and compensation efforts in the postwar period is also subject to critical analysis. The aim of the study, which is embedded in the political, economic, and social development of the city of Frankfurt am Main, is to gain an overall picture of events in the financial center in order to understand how it changed because of the displacement and persecution of Jews.
The second part of the project, researched by János Varga, explores the history of the Polytechnic Society (Polytechnische Gesellschaft), an association for the promotion of education and science in Frankfurt am Main founded in 1816. The Frankfurt Savings Bank (Frankfurter Sparkasse von 1822) was a subsidiary institute of the Polytechnic Society. Implementing methods of organizational history and collective biography, the project systematically analyzes how the »Polytechnische« and its members responded to National Socialism from the 1920s to the 1960s. On the one hand, the study looks into the fate of the Society’s members that were persecuted as Jews or for other reasons. On the other hand, it examines the extent to which other members accommodated themselves to the Nazi regime or actively supported National Socialism – before and after 1933. This approach revisits the widespread perception that the »Polytechnische« was committed to liberal and democratic values and was ultimately forced to conform to the new regime. In addition, the study asks to what extent its findings can be transferred to comparable organizations and what significance regionally operating charitable organizations had overall during the National Socialist era.
