Richard Kerschagl, Die Entwicklung des bargeldlosen Zahlungsverkehres (1922)

Kerschagl’s work is a single-author economic-historical Festschrift study, issued for the fiftieth anniversary of the Wiener Giro- und Cassen-Verein. In four compact chapters it moves from Egypt, Rome, and Greece; through medieval exchange fairs and early giro banks; to modern English, American, and Continental clearing systems; and finally to Austria-Hungary. Its thesis is that cashless payment is not a mere technical convenience but a structural form of credit economy: it economizes on specie and notes, turns payment into accounting and legal discharge, and creates institutions of compensation.

Eine organisch zusammenhängende, auf wirtschaftshistorischem Boden stehende Gesamtbetrachtung des Gegenstandes aber hat es bis nun nicht gegeben.

English translation: An organically coherent overall treatment of the subject grounded in economic history has, however, not existed until now.

This programmatic claim explains the book’s method. Kerschagl refuses antiquarian “curiosities” and reads checks, giro transfers, clearing houses, account money, and bank settlement as one historical problem in monetary theory. In Rome, the origin of giro lies in the practical concentration of deposits: once several depositors share a banker, transfer by book entry becomes almost unavoidable.

Die ersten Anfänge des Überweisungsverkehrs ergaben sich mit Notwendigkeit dadurch, daß verschiedene Deponenten ihre Guthabungen bei demselben Bankier hatten und nun durch die Identität ihrer gemeinsamen Kassastelle die Abschreibungen sich gewissermaßen von selbst ergaben.

English translation: The first beginnings of transfer payments arose of necessity from the fact that various depositors held their balances with the same banker, so that, through the identity of their common cashier, the transfers between accounts arose, as it were, of themselves.

The Egyptian material, especially Preisigke’s work on money and grain giro, gives Kerschagl his sharpest conceptual move. Natural, monetary, and credit forms do not simply succeed one another; grain giro, tax giro, and money giro coexist inside highly organized administrative economies.

Es kann für den Theoretiker durchaus nicht gleichgiltig bleiben, wenn wir auf der einen Seite hier gewissermaßen einen Beweis für die wesentlich nicht vorhandene wirtschaftliche Richtigkeit der Einteilung Hildebrands hinsichtlich der Wirtschaftsepochen mit Bezug auf die zeitliche Reihenfolge: Naturalwirtschaft, Geldwirtschaft, Kreditwirtschaft finden.

English translation: It cannot be a matter of indifference to the theorist that, on the one hand, we find here, so to speak, evidence for the essentially untenable economic accuracy of Hildebrand's division of economic epochs into the temporal sequence: barter economy, money economy, credit economy.

The medieval and early-modern chapters recast clearing as a response to bad coin, fragmented sovereignties, and the danger of moving metal. Exchange fairs, skontro arrangements, double-entry bookkeeping, and account monies such as later Hamburg’s Mark Banco all abstract payment from circulating coin. Kerschagl repeatedly contrasts institutional invention with the impotence of purely statutory monetary control.

Die diesbezüglichen gesetzlichen Bestimmungen, der damaligen «Inflation» einen Riegel vorzuschieben, blieben gänzlich erfolglos.

English translation: The relevant statutory provisions intended to put a stop to the "inflation" of that time remained entirely without success.

England and the United States become the modern type cases: everyday checks, bank clearing, and final settlement through central institutions reduce the need for cash without abolishing monetary discipline. Clearing is treated as a mechanism of “Geldschöpfung” and monetary economy, not just as banking technique.

Von welcher Bedeutung das Clearing für die Geldschöpfung und die Möglichkeit der Erhaltung einer möglichst geringen Geldmenge ist, zeigen am besten wohl die Umsätze des Clearinghouse, die im Jahre 1920 in London allein mehr als 32 Milliarden Pfund betrugen.

English translation: How significant clearing is for the creation of money and for the possibility of maintaining as small a money supply as possible is perhaps best shown by the turnover of the Clearing House, which in 1920 amounted to more than 32 billion pounds in London alone.

The Austrian-Hungarian chapter is the destination of the whole argument. Kerschagl reconstructs the Österreichisch-ungarische Bank’s giro system, the Postsparkassen, the Saldierungsverein, regional clearing associations, and above all the Wiener Giro- und Cassen-Verein. The latter appears as Vienna’s bank of banks, but also as a securities-clearing and control apparatus.

Stückeumsatz und Bargeldumsatz sind demnach durch einen weitgehendst ausgebauten Kompensationsmechanismus auf ein Minimum reduziert.

English translation: Turnover in securities and in cash is thus reduced to a minimum by a highly developed compensation mechanism.

The work’s immediate relevance is postwar Austria: inflation, note pressure, fiscal emergency, and a renewed expansion of cash use. Hence Kerschagl’s polemic against taxes and rules that penalize book transfers, especially the Bankenumsatzsteuer. For him, cashless settlement is part of the security, elasticity, and rationalization of modern credit.

Gleichzeitig sind durch dieses Gesetz die Kontrollen im Abrechnungsverkehr und die vielen rein buchhalterischen und kontrollmäßigen Konti auf das äußerste belastet und erschwert worden und damit wurde eine der wichtigsten Voraussetzungen des bargeldlosen Zahlungsverkehrs, die erhöhte Sicherheit und Zuverlässigkeit, empfindlich getroffen.

English translation: At the same time, this law has placed the utmost burden and difficulty upon the controls in the clearing system and upon the many purely bookkeeping and control accounts, and thereby one of the most important preconditions of cashless payment traffic—enhanced security and reliability—has been seriously impaired.

The book’s enduring contribution is to define payment historically as organized cancellation rather than mere delivery of money. Its story runs from shared cashiers to clearing houses, from coin to account money, and from private convenience to macroeconomic necessity.