in Munich; redeveloped from 1994 into the
Fünf Höfe commercial complex in Munich, new head office of Hypo-Bank completed in 1981 The Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechsel-Bank was founded by law of on the initiative of
King Ludwig I of Bavaria, following discussions going back to 1818. It started operations on , with the king as one of its founding shareholders. While established as a stock corporation, it was under tight government supervision and its commercial business was initially limited to mortgages. In 1836, it was granted the privilege to issue notes in Bavaria and kept it until the creation of the
Reichsbank in 1875, when the purpose-created
Bayerische Notenbank took it over. It also had the right to issue
Pfandbriefs from 1864, eventually developing into the largest
mortgage bank in Germany in the late 19th century. Until 1905, its activity was limited to Southern Bavaria, while the northern part of the kingdom was the remit of the
Bavarian State Bank. It also developed an insurance business, eventually spun off as in 1906. It survived the
European banking crisis of 1931 comparatively unscathed. During the Nazi era, the Hypo-Bank, which had a large Jewish customer base, was initially reluctant to display enthusiasm for the regime but had to implement the official
aryanization policy from 1938. In 1939, following the Nazi
Anschluss of Austria, it acquired the former Austrian state-owned , which it renamed . Unlike the larger
Deutsche Bank,
Dresdner Bank and
Commerzbank which were temporarily broken up, Hypo-Bank was spared by the banking reforms of the immediate postwar period. ==See also==