Constituting autonomy — from the Reichsbank to the Bundesbank

Abstract

Central banking came late to Germany for the simple reason that the modern German state itself was only established in 1871 with the subordination of the southern German monarchies to the leadership of the Prussian king as Kaiser of a united ‘small Germany’.1 With the exception of the Banca d’ltalia (1893) and the Schweizerische Nationalbank (1905), all the other major European central banks were founded much earlier: the Swedish Riksbank in 1668, the Bank of England in 1694, the Banque de France in 1800, the Nederlandsche Bank in 1814 and the Belgian Banque Nationale in 1850. One of the driving motives of political unification was the desire to eradicate the commercial disadvantages of disparate systems of coinage and weights and measures.