While Prague in the second half of the 19th century was living a romantic Czech national revival, building theaters and campaigns for the purity of the Czech language, in Northern Bohemia people spoke the language of money, technology and coal. The northern borderland was an economic superpower of European stature, keeping the rest of the monarchy afloat financially and in terms of raw materials.
Establishment of the Anglo-Austrian Bank
The bank was founded in December 1863 and became fully operational in 1864, with its headquarters in Vienna. Behind its creation was an extremely influential group of British capitalists and financiers from London (including the banking house Glyn, Mills & Co. ) and leading Austrian aristocrats and industrialists.
It was a revolutionary act in the history of Central European banking. It was the first ever large universal bank (so-called mobilier bank ) of British design in the Habsburg monarchy. It had autonomous headquarters in London and Vienna (it later opened key branches in Prague, Žatec and other centers). Its main mission was one and only: to cross capital borders and pump the huge British financial surplus directly into industrial innovations in the Monarchy.
Financial injection for NordBöhmen: Why was domestic capital not enough?
In the 1860s and 1870s, North Bohemia stood on the threshold of a monumental transformation. Primitive coal mining was no longer enough to satisfy the hunger of Saxon and Austrian industry. It was necessary to switch to massive mining, dig hundreds of meters deep shafts, chamber, uncover seams, install giant steam pumps for groundwater and build more and more railway lines (such as the Ústí nad Labem Railway – ATE) and their ubiquitous sidings. Railway sidings were the first real possibility to get huge amounts of material from anywhere to anywhere at acceptable costs.
The local provincial capital did not have the capacity for such gigantic investments. The entry of the Anglo-Austrian Bank (and the Rothschild Creditanstalt) acted as a floodgate bursting. Through this bank, British capital did not seek a conservative purchase of government bonds, but aggressively bought mining fields, founded joint-stock coal companies and brought in the most modern British mining equipment (for example, the first bucket bagger from Manchester).
The Rise of a Mining Giant: The Britannia Company and Sir G. Griffith
The names of the large North Bohemian mining companies at that time clearly reflected the origin of the money: in addition to Saxonia (Saxon capital) or Bohemia (capital of the Dresden Bank), it was, for example, Britannia.
The establishment of the Britannia coal mining company and the influence of British aristocrats and investors such as Sir G. Griffith (Griffith-Waldie family) was a direct result of this London-Vienna-North Bohemia financial axis. This company operated as a technological pioneer on two main fronts in the northern coalfield:
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In the Most and Teplice areas (Ervěnice, Proboštov): Here the company built deep mines such as Robert and the massive complex of mines Britannia IV, V and VI . These mines were among the most modern in the entire district and mined the highest quality brown coal for export to Germany.
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In the Sokolov region (Královské Poříčí): Here Britannia operated the Meluzína, Bernard and Marie mines from the 1880s . Here, British know-how was also fully demonstrated – the English chemist James Page conducted the first ever experiments with the extraction of valuable montane wax from coal.
British investors like Griffith didn't just bring money. They introduced the British model of management and social policy in northern Bohemia. In Královské Poříčí, Britannia built 89 modern houses, a workers' school and an employee spa for its employees, which were unprecedented at the time.
The Rothschilds and their financial influence in our region
If North Bohemia ( NordBöhmen ) was the battlefield of global capital, then the Rothschilds were one of the generals. While in the Ostrava region they owned mines and steelworks directly under their family name (e.g. Vítkovice or Důl Anselm), in North Bohemia they chose a much more refined and powerful strategy. They operated here through their main financial cruiser – the K. k. priviligerte Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe (Creditanstalt for short) , which was founded in 1855 by Anselm von Rothschild.
The relationship of the Rothschilds (through the Creditanstalt) to the industrialization of North Bohemia and their rivalry with the Austro-Anglo-Bank can be summarized in three fundamental chapters:
Takeover of Ústí nad Labem Railway (ATE)
The Ústí-Teplice Railway ( Aussig-Teplitzer Eisenbahn ) was a key artery for the export of brown coal from the Teplice coalfield to the port of Aussig (Ústí nad Labem) and further along the Elbe to Germany. When the founders of the railway (led by Count Nostitz) exhausted their initial capital and the construction of the railways found themselves in crisis, it was the Rothschilds who intervened. Their Creditanstalt bought up ATE's preference shares at the then astronomical value of 1 million guilders . This step saved the railway, enabled its completion and ensured the Rothschilds massive influence over the transport of coal from northern Bohemia.
Financing of the competing Buštěhradská dráhy (BEB)
To make matters worse, Rothschild's Creditanstalt (together with the powerful Klein brothers' business family) took complete control of the region's second major railway artery - the Buštehrad Railway (BEB) . They transformed this originally horse-drawn railway into a giant steam-powered network, which they extended to Komotau (Chomutov). In this way, they created direct competition for ATE and the Austro-Anglo-German Bank and aggressively took a huge share of the coal transport from the entire Podkrušnohoří Mountains.
War of the financial titans: Creditanstalt vs. Anglo-Bank
In Northern Bohemia, in the second half of the 19th century, a real corporate clash of giants took place. On one side stood British capital coordinated by the Austro-Anglo-German Bank (which founded mining companies such as Britannia or Saxonia ), on the other side stood the continental capital of the Rothschilds and their Creditanstalt.
These two players effectively divided up the North Bohemian coal basin. They fought not with weapons or language decrees, but:
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By grouping mine fields.
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By building coal sidings to individual shafts.
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The pricing policy for transporting one ton of coal.
Here we clearly see that Northern Bohemia was so incredibly rich and promising at that time that they were competing for it. the most powerful banking houses in the worldThe local coal fields were as important to the European economy as the oil fields in the Middle East are today. The entire region functioned as an independent economic state within a state on which Prague, with its political disputes, was completely financially dependent.
And here began a truly fierce struggle for political ownership of this region, for which its population paid a deep price.
Continuation of the panel: The struggle for the wealth of our region at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.