Habsburg Empire – Page 2 – Central European Economic and Social History

THE VIENNA STOCK EXCHANGE

07/02/2017Susanne WurmFINANCE AND ECONOMY IN CEE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTSFirst World War, Habsburg Empire, Iron Curtain, New York Stock Exchange, NEWEX, Ringstrasse, Theophil Hansen

The Vienna Stock Exchange. Architect: Theophil Hansen, 1874-1877

The Vienna Stock Exchange was founded in 1771 by Empress Maria Theresia as one of the first stock exchanges in the world. Gradually the Vienna Stock Exchange developed into the central capital market of the Habsburg Empire. Originally only government bonds and currencies were traded and the building was open to the public. On some days up to 2,000 people were present. In 1818 The Austrian central bank was the first public limited company that was quoted on the Vienna Stock Exchange. Due to the industrialisation and economic boom in the Habsburg Empire in the course of the 19^th century the stock exchange gradually gained international reputation. Consequently a host of companies issued shares there. Due to the empire’s liberal economic policies in the second half of the 19^th century unfortunately several unstable businesses were financed via a share issue there, which led to a wave of speculation that culminated in the stock exchange crash of 9^th May 1873. In the course of this stock exchange break down nearly half of the public limited companies quoted there disappeared. The recovery took a long time and in the meantime trade was mainly in government bonds. That was the return of the big banks as the main financiers of enterprises. These banks also dominated the capital market and stock exchange trading. Trade on the Vienna Stock Exchange started to pick up once more so that new regulation was needed to. In 1875 the third Stock Exchange Law was passed that guaranteed the complete independence of the Vienna Stock Exchange. Finally in 1877 the new building for the Vienna Stock Exchange was opened, designed by one of the famous architects of the “Ringstrasse”, Theophil Hansen. During this time of consolidation rich financiers dominated the trade in shares there and the bond market was the “playground” of the “privatiers”, the well-to-do upper middle class. During the First World War the Vienna Stock Exchange was closed. At the end of 1919 the trading floors were opened to the public again and immediately experienced a boom which ended in a crash in March 1924. In the following years the shocks of the Great Depression of 1929 greatly hampered trading there. The bankruptcy of banks and the plunge of share prices affected the trade on the Vienna Stock Exchange and the number of visitors declined drastically. Interestingly enough, the New York Stock Exchange crash in October 1929, in fact, had no direct consequences for Vienna.…

INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL FLOW, BANKS AND INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES IN CEE IN THE INTERWAR YEARS

07/02/2017Susanne WurmFINANCE AND ECONOMY IN CEE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTSAnschluß, Credit-Anstalt, First World War, Habsburg Empire, Länderbank, Nazi

Former Länderbank (Vienna), founded 1880, architect Otto Wagner (built 1882-1884)

Central and South-Eastern Europe became one of the most important world markets for capital exports after the First World War. Foreign investors not only invested in the defeated countries, such as Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria, but also in Poland and Czechoslovakia. From 1919 till 1923 international capital from Britain, France, the USA, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland acquired substantial shares in the main Viennese banks. The Länderbank and the Anglo-Austrian Bank were turned into totally foreign-owned banks, based in Paris and London. A similar development of Western European capital participation took place in all the joint-stock banks of the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the exception of the Zivnobanka in Prague. This bank increased its investment in South-Eastern Europe, often together with Western European financial groups. As the governments of the successor states were in urgent need of foreign investment, they promoted the internationalisation of the banking systems there. So the governments paved the way for the access of international capital to industrial enterprises via the participation in the equity of the big commercial banks. This followed the traditional investment pattern of the region and through the internationalisation of the banks the whole area moved closer to international markets.…

CENTRAL EUROPEAN INTERCULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS: “K & K KAKANIEN”

26/01/2017Susanne WurmCENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTSAustro-Hungarian Empire, Balkans, Bela Bartok, Czech, fin-de-siècle Vienna, Habsburg Empire, Hungarian, Kakania, Lawrence Goodwyn, Leo Loewenthal, Robert Musil, Slovak

Central European architecture: Prague, Czech Republic

A question to be asked is whether the historical and cultural entity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Danube basin and special cultural relationships of the past in any way promoted the expansion of Austrian banks, insurances and other businesses in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe after 1989.
Robert Musil sarcastically describes in his famous novel “The Man Without Qualities“ the disintegration of Austrian hierarchical society and liberal-rational culture: “Kakania”. “Kakania was the first country at the present stage of development, from which God had withdrawn all credit, all love of life, all belief in itself and the capacity of all cultural nations to spread the useful imagination that they had a task to fullfill.” This Kakania is at the same time a model of an intellectual concept of Central Europe – more imaginary than a real geographically and historically defined area – today. Again Robert Musil: “…after having taken stock of the bulk of Central European ideas, he found out, not only to his regret, that it consisted only of contradictions, but to his astonishment he also realised that these contradictions are melting into each other when you look at them carefully.” “People who were not born then,” wrote Musil about the Austrian fin-de-siècle , “ will find it difficult to believe, but the fact is that even then time was moving faster than a cavalry camel…. But in those days, no one knew what it was moving towards; nor could anyone quite distinguish between what was above and what was below, between what was moving forward and what backward.”…

THE DANUBE BASIN: CULTURAL CROSSROADS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

15/01/2017Susanne WurmCENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTSagrarian reform, Balkans, Elias Canetti, Habsburg Empire, Osman Empire, Rustschuk, Sephardic Jews, Serbia Bosnian Jews, Spanioli, Turks

The Danube, Budapest

“When someone went up the Danube to Vienna, it was said that he went to Europe”, Elias Canetti (the name is derived from the Spanish city of “Canete”, from where the family seemed to have been expulsed) wrote in the first part of his autobiography “The Rescued Tongue” in 1977. Canetti was born in Rustschuk / Ruse, Bulgaria, at the Danube and his native town became the symbolic start of the journey of the later winner of the Noble prize for literature. His Jewish forefathers were expelled from Spain after the Christian Reconquista and settled in Rustschuk as merchants. This “second diaspora” made Canetti a “Sephardic Jew”, who chose German as the “mother tongue” of his literature. Canetti’s path of life was a European one and it started in Vienna after he had crossed an invisible frontier when going up the Danube. …

Central European Economic and Social History

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Tag: Habsburg Empire