23rd June 1943
B&M Mi.K4 II a

Südwestdeutsche Beamtenbank

(Southwest German Civil Service Bank)

From Wikipedia:

From 1972 until 2005 five independent cooperative banks came under the Badische Beamtenbanks (BBBank) umbrella: the Hessische Beamtenbank (Darmstadt), the Südwestdeutsche Beamtenbank (Frankfurt am Main), the Beamtenbank zu Köln, the Bayerische Beamten Bank and last the Schleswig-Holsteinische Beamtenbank. Since then the BBBank is the only civil servants bank in Germany.

The BBBank eG (formerly Badische Beamtenbank) is a German cooperative bank headquartered in Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg). It is solely focused on private banking. With total assets of almost 11 billion Euros and over 470,000 members the bank is one of the biggest member banks in Germany.

On 12th November 1921 the BBBank was founded as a self-help facility for the public service in Karlsruhe. The Badische Beamten-Genossenschaftsbank eGmbH (Baden cooperative bank for civil servants), as the BBBank was called in those days, began operation on 1st January 1922 with 33 founding members in a small room in the House Nowackanlage 19. Already two years later the building on Waldstraße 1 was purchased, which to this day is part of the head office of the BBBank.

With the Nazi seizure of control in January 1933 the civil servants bank had to accept losses in the course of the Gleichschaltung (enforced conformity). The cooperative idea of self-help was majorly cut back and twisted for the new regimes purposes. In April 1933 Gotthold Mayer had to step down from his chairman position. However, in the beginning of 1946 he was able to take back the leadership of the Badischen Beamtenbank and navigate the Institute through the difficult post-war years and the currency reform. Only in 1967 the bank founder retired at the age of 80. At this point the bank had 136,000 members as well as 14 branches and was the biggest credit cooperative in Europe. Gotthold Mayer remained honorary chairman of the bank until his death on 7th February 1970.

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