Historical Institute of Deutsche Bank

Since 1988, one of the focal points of the Historical Institute's research has been on the National Socialist period. A general summary of the history of the bank during the years 1933-1945, written by Harold James, was published in 1995 as a chapter in "The Deutsche Bank 1870-1995". 

The publication won wide acclaim, especially because it presented the history of the bank during the Nazi era.

Deutsche Bank was the first German financial institution to initiate a rigorous and in-depth investigation into its history during National Socialism. An independent commission of historians set up in 1997 to research the bank’s history during the Nazi era further intensified this important work. At the beginning of 1999, historians working on the project discovered documents about loans from the Katowice branch that showed that the bank had financed construction work in Auschwitz.

Rolf-E. Breuer, then Spokesman of the Management Board, wrote a memo to all employees shortly afterwards: “The involvement of Deutsche Bank in the Nazi regime is a cause of deep consternation for us. I should like to emphasise once again, on the bank's behalf, that we deeply regret the misery and injustice suffered and that we acknowledge the bank's ethical and moral responsibility.”

In 2003, Harold James published a fully revised edition of this chapter in a new book with the title "The Nazi Dictatorship and the Deutsche Bank". This general presentation of the history of Deutsche Bank during the Nazi period was preceded by detailed studies, such as the examination of "Aryanization and the Nazi Economic War Against the Jews" (2001), also written by Harold James, and the report by Jonathan Steinberg, "The Deutsche Bank and its Gold Transactions during the Second World War" (1999).

In 2004, an extensive biography of Hermann Josef Abs (1901-1994), who was the bank's Spokesman of the management board for many years, was published in German by Lothar Gall. With discerning judgment, Gall dedicates special attention in this book to the years of the "Third Reich". A further biography about Deutsche Bank’s Spokesman Oscar Wassermann (1869-1934) was written by Avraham Barkai, and came out in German in 2005.

To commemorate the Jewish employees of Deutsche Bank who were victims of Nazi persecution a project was launched in 2021 to research individual fates and document them by gradually publishing them on the Historical Association of Deutsche Bank's website. The aim is to put a face to as many former Jewish colleagues as possible.