Founders' era In 1843, the first German cooperative bank was created by 50 inhabitants of
Öhringen in the
Kingdom of Württemberg, who named it the ("private savings and lending bank of Öhringen") – it still exists as the . In the later 1840s, economist
Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch started organizing the creation of cooperatives by local communities of craftsmen or farmers in his home town of
Delitzsch, in the Prussian
Province of Saxony, and promoted national legislation to encourage it. The first such venture, a or raw materials purchasing association, was created by a group of shoemakers in 1849. The next year in 1850, Schulze-Delitzsch created another association for advance payments to craftsmen in Delitzsch. In 1859, Schulze-Delitzsch convened the first group meeting of cooperatives or in
Weimar and founded a central bureau of cooperative societies (), which he ran from 1861, which in 1864 became the general association of German commercial and economic cooperatives based on self-help (). Also in 1864, Schulze-Delitzsch led the creation of the bank Soergel, Parrisius & Co. in Berlin, also known as , to serve as central financial institution for the . Meanwhile, in 1864,
Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen fostered the creation of the first rural cooperative bank, the ("lending association of Heddesdorf"), in the village of near
Neuwied, in
Rhenish Prussia between
Koblenz and
Cologne. Raiffeisen considered joining Schulze-Delitzsch's initiative, but eventually concluded that the needs of rural communities were different from the ones of town craftsmen which were Schulze-Delitzsch's focus. In 1876, Raiffeisen created a financial institution in Neuwied to serve the network, which in 1926 was renamed . In 1877, he created the Bar Association of Rural Cooperatives , the first national body for his rural cooperative movement. In 1910, that association's headquarters was relocated from Neuwied to
Berlin, and in 1917 it was renamed the General Association of German Raiffeisen Cooperatives (). allowing the BVR to claim in 2022 that "The protection scheme run by the Cooperative Financial Network is therefore the world's oldest exclusively privately financed deposit guarantee fund for banks." In 1939, Dresdner Bank phased out its cooperative-serving operations whose business was transferred to the , which thus became the sole national financial institution serving the cooperative banks. During
World War II, savings were directed towards investment in government bonds as part of the regime's policy of
financial repression. In the late 1960s, financial reform led to increased competition in the German banking sector, including with the
Sparkassen, and encouraged the consideration of merger between the two national cooperative banking organizations, the and the . The negotiations were completed in 1972 with the creation of the
Bundesverband der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken (BVR) in
Bonn. At the same time, many local cooperatives merged, and regional organizations were consolidated. In 1975, new federal legislation redefined the role of the DGK, renamed it DG Bank, and allowed it to gradually take over the Cooperative Group's regional financial institutions. The next year, DG Bank started developing an international network, with its first offices abroad established in
New York and
Hong Kong. In the mid-1980s the cooperative group's regional structures in Bavaria ran into financial difficulties, and were taken over by DG Bank. This triggered a debate on the structure of the group, either with two tiers (local and federal) or three (with an intermediate regional level). In December 1989, a compromise was adopted, known as the , which acknowledged the coexistence of two-tier and three-tier structures within the Cooperative Financial Group. In July 1990, with
German reunification, DG Bank assumed the role of central financial institution for the still existing and new in
East Germany. In 1998, DG Bank was converted into a joint-stock company, and the cooperatives purchased the shares owned by the German federal government. In 2000, two of the remaining regional entities, (SGZ-Bank) in Frankfurt, a successor to the of Darmstadt, and (GZB-Bank) in
Stuttgart merged to form GZ-Bank. It connected the bank deposit and a nearby underground parking lot. Probably nobody noticed anything, because the parking lot was shielded by roulettes, and people thought that this part was under repair. There are some similarities between this robbery and the
Baker Street robbery in London. In 2024 it became public knowledge, that the
Federal Financial Supervisory Authority had criticized the Düsseldorf-Neuss branch of the Volksbank for insufficient measures against money laundering. The company
GIC International, allegedly founded in 2012 by the
Iranian
Ghadir holding, an entity of the regime in Iran, and sanctioned by the United States, did business with the Volksbank. Journalists had uncovered communication of
GIC and
Ghadir personnel as late as 2022. In 2024 the same Volksbank was conned by a former accountant of the French
Kiabi fashion group to transfer Euro 100 million of Kiabi's money to an account in Turkey. As a result, Kiabi requested the money back from the Volksbank Düsseldorf-Neuss and the Financial Supervisory Authority replaced the management in November with a special representative. In early 2025 the Financial Supervisory Authority banned the "Raiffeisenbank im Hochtaunus eG" in
Bad Homburg from granting loans. The bank had opened an online banking service in 2022 and had aggressively advertised for new customers. After press research, a combination of defaulted loans,
Equity ratio and structural risks prompted the Supervisory Authority to intervene. File:Berlin, Am Zeughaus 1-2, Preussische Central-Genossenschafts-Casse.jpg|Building
Am Zeughaus 2 in
Berlin (right), from 1899 seat of the , and 1906 extension on
Am Zeughaus 1 (left); now offices of the
Deutsches Historisches Museum File:Gedenktafel Am Zeughaus 2 (Mitte) Preußische Central-Genossenschaftskasse.jpg|Plaque on the building
Am Zeughaus 2 File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F027090-0003, Bonn, Adenauer-Allee, Raiffeisen Zentralbank.jpg|Regional in
Bonn, Adenauerallee 121, photographed in 1968; now Bonn office of the
Deutscher Genossenschafts- und Raiffeisenverband (DGRV) File:Bonn-Gronau Adenauerallee 127 Raiffeisenhaus.jpg| in Bonn, Adenauerallee 127, next to the previous building and a stone's throw from the former
Federal Chancellery, former head office (and now Bonn office) of the File:2013-04-21 Schulze-Delitzsch-Haus, Heussallee 5, Bonn IMG 0087.jpg|, former seat of the and now Bonn office of the BVR File:City-Haus I, Frankfurt, Northwest view 20170226 1.jpg|
City-Haus in Frankfurt, head office of DG Bank (1976–1993) and still part of the DZ Bank head office complex File:Frankfurt Westend Tower.Süd.20130616.jpg|
Westendstrasse 1, head office of DG Bank (1993–2001) then of
DZ Bank in Frankfurt, designed by
Kohn Pedersen Fox File:Bürogebäude am Potsdamer Platz 20150224 1.jpg|Building at Schellingstrasse 4 in
Berlin, designed by
Arata Isozaki and completed in 1997; current head office of the BVR and of the DGRV File:DZ Bank Haus (Frank Gehry).jpg|
DZ Bank building on
Pariser Platz, initially DG Bank's Berlin office designed by
Frank Gehry and completed in 2000 File:Inside the DZ Bank building in Berlin.jpg|Atrium inside the DZ Bank building in Berlin ==Group structure and operations==