Helene Lieser’s short book review evaluates the German Statistical Office’s consolidation of previously scattered banking statistics. Its central distinction is between producing new evidence and making existing evidence usable. The reviewed publication adopts a broad functional definition of banks:
„Banken“ bedeutet hier „alle Organe der Kreditvermittlung, d. h. alle Anstalten, die Geldkapitalien in irgendeiner Form aufnehmen, um sie wieder auszuleihen“.
English translation: “Banks” here means “all agencies of credit intermediation, i.e. all institutions that receive money capital in any form in order to lend it out again.”
This definition establishes the compilation’s scope through the activity of borrowing and lending. Lieser then identifies its evidentiary basis: figures already published in the Reichsanzeiger, business reports, Deutscher Ökonomist, and elsewhere. Her favorable assessment concerns their synthesis, not their originality.
Wenn auch neue Erkenntnisse aus dem publizierten Material nicht geschöpft werden, so wird doch vieles durch die tabellarische Anordnung und graphische Darstellung weiten Kreisen verständlicher gemacht.
English translation: Although no new insights are drawn from the published material, much is nevertheless made more comprehensible to broad audiences through tabular arrangement and graphical presentation.
Moving from coverage to sources and finally to presentation, the review locates the work’s value in statistical accessibility. Tables and graphics make dispersed information intelligible beyond its existing readership; this communicative achievement, rather than analytical discovery, grounds Lieser’s recommendation.
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