http://www.deutsche-bank.de/db/125/part2.htm (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
Rapid expansion in the early decades
Deutsche Bank's first office was at 21 Franzosische Strasse in Berlin, on the first floor of an unimposing building. It remained there for just over a year and then moved, together with roughly fifty staff, to premises very close to the Berlin stock exchange. From 1876 onwards the head office buildings went up at the corners of Behren-, Mauer- and Franzosische Strasse. The view of the two connecting arches was later to become something of a hallmark for the bank.
In its early years the bank mainly tried to become established in regular banking business. Initially it kept out of equity issues and new listings, which allowed it to emerge almost unscathed from the string of failures among new listings in 1873. Siemens rightly took credit for saving Deutsche from becoming a "firm of back-street profiteers". At that time many new companies were set up purely to make a quick profit from the shares issued.
Deutsche Bank's first decades in business were a period of rapid expansion. A good eye for promising business was combined with a strong awareness of risk. In the 1880s, issuing business began to grow more important and then really took off in the 1890s. The bank played a major part in the build-up of the German electrical engineering industry and also gained a strong position in the iron and steel industry. A strong base in Germany permitted the financing of business abroad, which kept the bank occupied for many years, in some cases for decades, the best-known example being the Baghdad railroad.
