The Aryanization of Private Banks in the Third Reich

There was scarcely a branch of economy of the Weimar Republic in which Jews were more prominent than private banking. The exclusion of Jewish bankers from the economic life of the Third Reich thus had deep repercussions on the German financial industry. This study uses the example of the private banking sector to examine the process of Aryanization in all its complexity - from the manifold discrimination at the outset; to the sale, usually under duress and typically at reduced prices, of Jewish-owned businesses to non-Jews; and finally, to the confiscation of residual assets by the Nazi state. The Aryanization of Private Banks in the Third Reich details several types of transactions and business procedures used to transfer commercial properties and considers the interests, motives and actions of both Jewish sellers and 'Aryan' purchasers. The book also discusses postwar restitutions and traces the often deficient legal proceedings after 1945 that sought to correct the injustices done to Jewish business owners.