The Development of Central Banking in Germany The history of
banking in Germany, like that of the United States, should
properly be considered in terms of the separate States, but it
is impossible to do that here and we shall concentrate our
attention on the main events in Prussia, with an occasional
reference to the policy of other States. The setting in Germany
is dissimilar to that in the other countries we have so far
considered, for the reason that Germany at no time adopted true
laisser-faire principles in her commercial policy, and therefore
it is less surprising to find State intervention in banking in
this country than in any other. The longer retention of
mediaeval restrictions on the free circulation of goods and
services witnessed a corresponding lag in the development of
banking. But a good deal of literature was written about banks
in the early eighteenth century, and there was detectable in
most of these writings a mercantilist idea that the setting up
of banks would produce a sudden and conspi