This rather small section of the archives’ holdings contains documents of the Vienna headquarters of the German Reichsbank and its branch offices within the territory of the former Republic of Austria from the period 1938 to 1945. Even though these documents mainly pertain to administrative issues and contain hardly any information on central bank topics, they still enable the reader to draw conclusions on the organizational development of the respective Reichsbank branch office during that time. In 1999 and 2000, attempts were made to retrieve more documents from that period from the OeNB’s head office in Vienna as well as its branch offices.Unfortunately, this search was not very successful.
In contrast, the actions taken to liquidate the Oesterreichische Nationalbank are quite well documented in record group III/1a, files of the Vienna Reichsbank office (“Reichsbankhauptstelle Wien 1938–1945”).This liquidation process began in 1938 but was never completed, which is why, in 1945, the OeNB did not have to be completely reestablished; instead, it only needed to be reinstated in line with the “Notenbank-Überleitungsgesetz” (Central Bank Transition Act).
Moreover, the OeNB’s Bank History Archives contain a complete collection of the Reichbank’s annual reports (“Verwaltungsberichte der Reichsbank”, filed under initial III/3a) covering the years 1876 (when the Reichsbank was established) to 1944.However, the latter report, which was prepared in early 1945, is rather a draft report than a proper annual report.
There are no records on what happened to the missing documents from this historically significant period. Reportedly, they were taken to Berlin shortly before the Red Army entered Austria, and were there seized by the Allied forces. As a matter of fact, microfilm copies of files from the Vienna Reichsbank office can be found in the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv) in Berlin and the Russian State Military Archive (Rossijskij Gosudarstvennyj Voennyj Archiv) in Moscow. The OeNB commissioned these documents to be blown up to A4 size, and these reproduction have been part of the Bank History Archives’ inventory since 2008.Stacked one after the other, they add up to one running meter.