Bethmanns and Rothschilds

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Paul Johnson (1988)
What happened was this. Until the beginning of the revolutionary wars in France, in the mid-1790s, European merchant banking was dominated by non-Jews: the Barings of London, the Hopes of Amsterdam, and the Gebrüder Bethmann of Frankfurt.

Egon Caesar Conte Corti (1927)
In spite of this new offensive in favor of the House of Rothschild, the business was entrusted to Bethmann, on the ground that the property of that house was 'well known to be so great as to require no other security than a duly binding contract or debenture.' This was a triumph of Bethmann over Rothschild, and it was due to the fact that the importance and financial greatness of the firm of Rothschild, which at that time [1814] was still of very recent date, was not appreciated at Vienna, and even Barbier had more faith in the old Christian firm of Bethmann than in the upstart Jewish firm.

Bethmanns and Rothschilds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethmanns_and_Rothschilds

Bethmann family
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethmann_family

On 31 October 1813 the retreating Emperor Napoleon spent the night as an unannounced guest at the Bethmanns' garden house.[23] Bethmann's negotiating skills managed to persuade the French to withdraw their army without further bloodshed from Frankfurt.

Johann Philipp Bethmann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Phi ... (1715-1793)


Moritz von Bethmann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritz_von_Bethmann

Von Bethmann focused especially on railway construction. Together with the House of Rothschild, he established three railroad companies in succession: Taunus-Eisenbahn AG in 1836, Frankfurt-Hanauer Eisenbahn in 1844, and the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Nordbahn. In the 1850s he also invested in (among others) the Italian central railroad company, the Austrian state-controlled railroad company, and the Rhein-Nahe-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft.

Bethmann bank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethmann_bank

Within a short span of time, the Bethmann bank developed into one of Frankfurt's leading (Christian-owned) banks, on a scale comparable only to its younger rival, the House of Rothschild. The bank's fortunes began to rise in 1754 based on its business in imperial, princely and municipal bonds and skyrocketed from 1778, thanks to the bank's innovation of breaking the Austrian emperor's borrowing down into "sub-bonds" (Partialobligationen) at 1000 gulden each offered to the public, which made them tradeable in secondary markets. This transformed the bank from a lender to an underwriter of bond issues. At one point, the profits of Gebrüder Bethmann exceeded those of all its Frankfurt competitors together, and it ranked first among all German banks.

The two great banking dynasties of Frankfurt am Main were the House of Bethmann and the House of Rothschild. For several decades their affairs were closely intertwined while they carried on a vigorous rivalry. On occasion they would cooperate – as business partners but also, not least thanks to the pro-emancipation outlook of Simon Moritz von Bethmann, with the shared goal of enfranchising the Jews of Frankfurt.

Comment : All of this sounds like classical control opposition to me, doesn't it ?

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