Austro-Hungarian Bank
After peace was restored by the Congress of Vienna, and on advice from statesman Johann Philipp Stadion, Emperor Francis I established the privilegirte oesterreichische National-Bank by imperial patent on 1 June 1816.
[5] The Bank's notes suffered depreciation during the successive episodes of financial stress associated with the revolutions of 1848–1849, the Autumn Crisis of 1850 with Prussia, and the Crimean War mobilization from 1853 to 1856.
Meanwhile, the law of 18 March 1872, based on the experience of 1866, stipulated that any money issues in excess of the 200 million-gulden limit must be backed by precious metal reserves.
[6] The governor was to be jointly nominated by the respective ministers of finance of Austria and Hungary, and the bank was statutorily committed to opening new branches on an equitable basis in both parts of the Habsburg Monarchy.
The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, signed on 10 September 1919, provided for the Bank's liquidation and the allocation of its assets and liabilities to successor states, namely Austria and Hungary but also Czechoslovakia, Italy, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia.
In Vienna, the Bank increasingly had recourse to monetary financing, and covered about 75 percent of the budget deficit of the new Republican Austrian state between 1918 and 1922.
The hyperinflation was only stopped by the protocol for the reconstruction of Austria, signed in Geneva on 4 October 1922 and entailing a harsh fiscal and economic adjustment program supported by a loan guaranteed by the League of Nations.
[10]: 17 In 1860, the Bank moved across the street to a new building complex designed in 1855 by architect Heinrich Ferstel, himself the son of a Nationalbank official,[10]: 18 with ornate decoration including twelve statues by Hans Gasser representing the lands of the Austrian Empire.
[10]: 18 The complex also hosted the Wiener Börse (which only stayed there until 1869), a commercial mall (German: Basarhof), and from its opening in 1876, the famed Café Central.
The construction of a first building intended for money printing facilities started in 1913 after demolition of the Alser Kaserne [de] barracks, but was disrupted by World War I and stopped in 1917; the rest of Bauer's grandiose development plan was never implemented.
Its interiors were much altered after World War II; a major renovation was undertaken in 2021, with the aim to reopen the building by the National Bank's 100th anniversary in 2024.
