Typically when I am writing a post, I plug in any random thing that I am interested in and insert “Adolph” or “Adolf” into that search, this is one of the few blissful moments when an Adolph presented himself to me. I have been a client of Deutsche Bank for nearly four years, and no one informed me about this. In the ideal world, when I opened an account the bank clerk should have told me, “Mister Adolph you share a name with one of our founders Adolf vom Rath, this is clearly the bank for you!” That was sadly not the case.
While Deutsch Bank has a fascinating history, with a past ( and present) of fraud, rigging stock market prices, and paying exorbitant fines, - much like any other bank. In 1995, Deutsche Bank opened up its archives to independent researchers, (one of the first German companies to do so.) The historical documents of the Bank revealed that the Bank was in support of the Nazi regime and Hitlers plan to close Jewish business. As early as 1933 the Bank forced any Jewish employees to resign; this included Theodor Frank and Oscar Wassermann, who were on the Bank’s Board. The bank admitted that it was involved in closing 330 Jewish businesses and converting them to Aryan businesses. Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Aryanism and Hitler himself goes further, the Deutsche Bank president Emil George von Stauss, lent Adolf Hitler the typewriter which he used to write his infamous “Mein Kampf”
But my beloved nameling Adolf vom Rath died before WWI began. Adolf vom Rath was born on the 23rd of April, 1832 in Würzburg and died on the 7th of June, 1907 in Berlin.
German banking systems were at the time not well known in the international market; this meant that any importing and exporting business relied on French and English banks. To remedy this problem, a number of German banks came together to form “Deutsche Bank” a bank aimed to trade with other European countries and to place Germany on the international market.
The nine founding members each representing banks from Berlin, Bamberg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, applied to the Prussian government on February 25, 1870, for a licence to run as a bank. Ten years after the founding of the bank in 1880 Adolf transferred from Cologne to Berlin. Adolf worked as Chairman of the board and held a close eye on the Berlin office until his death on June 17, 1907.
Adolf and his wife lived at Viktoriastraße 6 in Berlin where they had a little salon where they kept company with many well-established people. Guests that they entertained included, the writer and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and the Nobel Prize winner for literature Gerhart Hauptmann. They also hosted the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, the scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, the historian Theodor Mommsen. The fellow Deutsche Bank partner Ludwig Bamberger was not only a Banker but also an influential politician, as was Rudolf von Bennigsen the founder of the German National Liberal Party.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/22/business/worldbusiness/22iht-db.html
http://www.rense.com/general77/meinl.htm
http://www.bankgeschichte.de/de/content/851.html
Book - "Die Berliner Salons: mit historisch-literarischen Spaziergängen" By Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger - 2000