Richard Kerschagl, Die Österreichisch-ungarische Bank vom Kriegsende bis zum Liquidationsbeginn (1927)

Richard Kerschagl’s journal article reconstructs the Austro-Hungarian Bank’s struggle to survive the monarchy’s dissolution, from the collapse of October 1918 to the appointment of liquidators in 1920. Its distinctive perspective is institutional: where earlier accounts described currency separation through the policies of the successor states, Kerschagl follows the bank from which those currencies broke away. An introductory section defines the problem; the longer second section traces negotiations, seizures, and institutional transfers across the former monarchy. Although drawn from a larger investigation covering 1914–1923, the article treats this transitional episode as a self-contained subject. Kerschagl acknowledges that his professional proximity to the events gives his account a partly subjective coloring.

The organizing distinction is between wartime service to the state, postwar resistance to dissolution, and the eventual execution of liquidation. During the war, the bank had sacrificed metallic reserves and issued notes predominantly against government obligations. After liquidation became unavoidable, its task would be to secure an equitable settlement and preserve its reputation. Between these phases lay a struggle over whether political disintegration necessarily required the destruction of a common monetary institution:

Die zweite Periode ist die des Existenzkampfes der Österreichisch-ungarischen Bank im eigentlichen Sinne.

English translation: The second period is that of the Austro-Hungarian Bank’s struggle for existence in the proper sense.

This struggle progressively narrowed: first to preserving operations throughout the former monarchy, then to maintaining an Austrian-Hungarian monetary connection, and finally to securing operational continuity for Austria. The first two projects failed. Kerschagl nevertheless credits the creation of an Austrian management within the old bank with preventing liquidation from immediately interrupting central-banking functions. He excludes the detailed preparation and execution of liquidation from his principal inquiry.

His economic argument distinguishes unavoidable postwar depreciation from the additional damage caused by fragmentation. Opening the borders of an exhausted, import-dependent economy would have depressed the crown’s external value even had substantial economic unity survived. Yet abrupt separation also disrupted an intensely developed territorial division of labor. Monetary unity consequently appeared as a remaining resource for recovery, rather than merely a relic of imperial government:

Keiner der neuen Nationalstaaten besaß selbst Metall genug, um auf dieser Basis zur Gründung einer definitiven, selbständigen Währung schreiten zu können.

English translation: None of the new nation-states itself possessed enough metal to proceed on this basis to establish a definitive, independent currency.

With metallic backing inadequate, economic regeneration offered the principal route toward monetary improvement. The bank’s established administrative network was therefore itself an asset. Kerschagl argues that successor governments initially recognized its usefulness even while asserting sovereignty. His account repeatedly contrasts requests for continued services with subsequent restrictions, seizures, and currency separation.

The regional survey differentiates these processes. Negotiations at Zagreb envisaged government supervision, a commissioner, and a local directorate, but Serbian military occupation and subsequent note marking undermined cooperation. In Czechoslovakia, the bank offered extensive accommodation, including a Prague head office, Czech official language, and representation in its governing machinery. The February 1919 stamping decree therefore appears as an especially severe defeat. Italy’s incorporation of acquired territories into the lira system seemed much less avoidable. Poland initially needed the bank’s branches, but sequestration led to their negotiated transfer to the Polish lending institution. These cases reveal how dependence on inherited infrastructure could coexist with determination to replace its authority.

Kerschagl frames these conflicts through private law as well as economic utility:

Die Bank war eine private Aktiengesellschaft, und es war nicht vorauszusehen, daß in einem Friedensvertrag eine so weitgehende Verletzung des Privatrechtes erfolgen würde, wie es tatsächlich nachher geschehen ist.

English translation: The bank was a private joint-stock company, and it could not have been foreseen that a peace treaty would entail so far-reaching a violation of private law as subsequently actually occurred.

Its privilege, still valid through 1919, supplied the basis for protests against unilateral state action. Kerschagl extends this defense beyond corporate property to the rights of noteholders. In the bank’s protest against Austrian stamping, the continuing obligation behind its notes becomes the decisive principle:

Es ist nicht zu vergessen, daß das Verhältnis der Österreichisch-ungarischen Bank zur Banknote im Grunde genommen durch die Stempelungsaktion keine Änderung erfahren kann, die Verpflichtung der Bank aus ihrer Note ohne Rücksicht auf deren Stempelung die gleiche bleibt.

English translation: It must not be forgotten that the relationship of the Austro-Hungarian Bank to the banknote can fundamentally undergo no change through the stamping operation; the bank’s obligation arising from its note remains the same regardless of its stamping.

Territorial differentiation thus threatened, in this interpretation, both noteholders’ rights and the issuing institution’s credit. Hungary provides the sharpest account of disrupted operations: Soviet rule brought occupation, forced changes in management, and unauthorized note production; the succeeding government restored the bank’s functions. In Romania, seizures, broken communications, and restrictions on importing unstamped notes had already reduced activity largely to winding up outstanding business.

Austria gives the institutional defense its strongest social justification. Kerschagl credits continued operations with moderating inflation and averting immediate political catastrophe, while conceding that officials sometimes faced a choice between printing notes and street fighting. Monetary restraint appears here as a decision burdened by social responsibility, not an uncomplicated technical remedy. The account closes with changes in leadership and the appointment of liquidators under Article 206 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain. Its significance lies in showing monetary disintegration from inside an institution that defended contractual continuity against national sovereignty, while adapting its machinery to serve the states that displaced it.