This is how the banking house Metzler survived the centuries

Frankfurt The Frankfurt Bankhaus Metzler has survived many crises, including the most severe ones. And that was quite a while ago – more than two hundred years. “At the end of the 18th century, at the beginning of the 19th century, during the Napoleonic occupation, business activities were completely at a standstill,” says Emmerich Müller, who leads the traditional company as primus inter pares on the five-strong board.

The “unfulfillable contribution payments” that the French Emperor had imposed on Frankfurt to finance his campaigns were to blame for the misery at the time. Neither the consequences of the First nor the Second World War were worse for the bank, nor the many small and large economic crises since then.

Founded in 1674 and family-owned ever since, the private bank is one of the few Frankfurt institutions that connect the financial center of the old Free Imperial City with the modern financial center that emerged after the Second World War.