GloCoBank researcher (European Networks), Sabine Schneider is presenting her research at the European Historical Economics Society Conference in Hohenheim, Germany, 4-6 September 2025.
Abstract:
Cross-border Payments and Correspondent Banking in Germany: War, Regime Change, and Reconstruction, 1920–1985
Sabine Schneider (University of Oxford)
Correspondent banking constitutes a vital dimension of the global financial architecture that handles day-to-day payments of trade credits, remittances, and foreign investments. Despite its centrality for the structure of financial globalisation, however, few studies have sought to uncover the historical evolution and persistence of correspondent banking relations in twentieth-century Europe and North America (Schenk, 2023; Panza and Merrett, 2019; Mollan, 2012). This paper examines the long-run development of correspondent banking links between German financial institutions and London and New York banks from 1920 to 1985. It builds on a bilateral dataset of correspondent banking relations, collected from The Bankers Almanac, to provide a chronology of the cross-border payment networks in the Weimar Republic, the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic. By analysing the geographic dispersion and scale of regional correspondent hubs, the paper provides a new perspective on the internationalisation of Germany’s banking sector during economic depression, war, and reconstruction. Its analysis maps the relative density of correspondent networks in Germany’s financial centres, at the regional and city level, and against key economic indicators. The findings emphasise the role of correspondent banking in Germany’s export-led growth model, and illuminate how financial crisis, territorial fragmentation, and political regime change shaped its inter-bank relations with the United Kingdom and the United States.
For details see https://ehesconference.org/
