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Georg Coch, the founder of the Postal Savings Bank
The history of financial
institutions also reflects their
founding pioneers’ careers.
The Austrian Postal Savings Bank
founded by the Hessian Georg Coch is
anything but an exception to the
rule.
Georg Coch was born in Hesserode
near Kassel on 11 February 1842. Due
to economically strained
circumstances – his father
died when the boy was eight –
the child enjoyed only some months
of secondary education in Geneva. He
received a commercial education in a
wholesale store, the company
Matthieu Frères & Cie in
Constantinople, and then moved to
Vienna. In 1880, the Minister of
Trade asked him to examine foreign
postal savings facilities – as
introduced successfully in Great
Britain 20 years before – in
regard to their viability in
Austria.
Coch visited England to devise a
system capable of linking a central
institution with its external
collecting points. The
administration and interior
communication of a postal savings
bank would require a functioning
organizational plan and a
standardized system of forms in the
exchange with the collecting points
–requirements that could not
be copied from the British model
1:1. The relevant procedures had to
be planned to the last detail. Coch
compiled a comprehensive collection
of documents which he finally
published in his report “The
Postal Savings Banks of England,
Belgium, Holland, and France in
regard to Austria.” He had now
paved the way for the successful
introduction of a postal savings
bank institution: the “k.k.
Postsparcassen-Amt” was opened
on 12 January 1883, and Georg Coch
was entrusted with its management.
The success of the Postal Savings
Bank founded by Georg Coch was
overwhelming: after only seven
weeks, 200,000 accounts had been
opened. This success strengthened
Coch’s position but also made
enemies come onto the scene. After
having run the bank for only three
years, Coch was relieved of his
office by the Minister of Finance
and “honorably
discharged” from public
service by the Emperor. Coch was
unable to cope with his social and
economic decline. He spent the last
years of his life as manager of a
railway project in the Ottoman
Empire. In 1890, he died from heart
failure in Constantinople at the age
of 48.
Success and growth 1883–1900
After its founding years under the
direction of Georg Coch, who was
keen to experiment, the Postal
Savings Bank Office became
increasingly consolidated. Its
original construction as a bank for
ordinary people soon proved to not
go far enough; it was only after the
introduction of cashless payment
that the institution began to make
profits. This branch was even more
successful than the savings division
and helped to get the idea of check
transactions accepted all over
Austria.
Around the turn of the century, the
offices and rooms of the Postal
Savings Bank proved less and less
suited for the expansion of business
operations and the increasing number
of employees. For the time being,
the bank reacted with provisional
arrangements and hasty rentals, such
as those in the
Schönlaterngasse (1891) and the
Bäckerstrasse (1894), as well
as the building of an annex to the
Dominican Monastery facing its yard.
Yet, working conditions had become
so poor that newspapers began to
write about the situation. When the
bank moved into its new home, Otto
Wagner’s Postal Savings Bank
building, in December 1906, all
parties involved heaved a sigh of
relief.
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