Since January 2003, the Eurosystem has carried out a quarterly bank lending survey (BLS) to expand its knowledge about the role of lending in the monetary transmission mechanism and thus to obtain additional information for monetary policy analysis.

The Macedonian king Alexander the Great is considered to this day to be a great general and conqueror. At the head of his army, he invaded the Persian Empire, the largest and most powerful of its time, which stretched from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent.

After comments on the MaRisk draft of 26 September 2022 had been examined in detail and following the subsequent discussions in the MaRisk Expert Panel, the official revised MaRisk were published on 29 June 2023.

Frederick II, of the House of Hohenstaufen and King of Sicily, took an extraordinary step when he started minting gold coins in 1231. This is because, for many centuries, the Christian West had been shaped purely by silver currency. Frederick II’s gold coins, called augustales, were something special: the quality of the image and their embossing are unique for their time. Augustales are extraordinary coins minted by an extraordinary ruler.

Spain's colonial empire spanned vast parts of Central and South America. These lands, rich in gold and silver, were an important resource for the kings of Spain. The Spanish established mints in their American colonies to produce coins from the precious metals extracted in the New World. The oldest mint on the American continent is the Mexican Mint, which was set up in 1535. Twice a year, the famous silver fleet sailed from the New World back to Spain fully laden with treasures.

Im zweiten Quartal 2023 erhöhte sich der Bestand an von finanziellen Mantelkapitalgesellschaften/Verbriefungszweckgesellschaften (FMKGs) im Euroraum begebenen Schuldverschreibungen auf 1 783 Mrd. € nach 1 741 Mrd. € im Vorquartal.

Im ersten Quartal 2023 belief sich der Bestand an von Investmentfonds (ohne Geldmarktfonds) begebenen Anteilen auf 15 302 Mrd. € und war damit um 304 Mrd. € höher als im ersten Quartal 2023.

In the Middle Ages, the Republic of Venice was a significant trading and naval power. Venice was the capital of a far-flung territory. The areas under the control of the lagoon city included a thin strip on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, parts of modern Greece, Crete and other islands in the Aegean.

The Byzantine Empire was one of the most significant and powerful states in the Middle Ages. It emerged from the eastern part of the Roman Empire, which was split into two in AD 395. The modern name "Byzantine Empire" is derived from the ancient Greek city of Byzantium. The Byzantines, however, considered themselves Roman. Constantinople, now Istanbul, was the capital of their empire. Its namesake, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (306-337), refounded the city on the site of Byzantium.

Constans was the youngest son of Constantin I the Great. He was only a boy when his father accorded him the rank of Caesar (emperor-designate). With the death of Constantin I in 337, his three sons Constantin II, Constantius II and Constans adopted the title of Augustus and divided the empire amongst themselves.

When Parisians stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789, the face of Europe was changed forever. At this time, France was ruled by Louis XVI, king by divine right. He reigned in the tradition of the Sun King Louis XIV and exercised almost absolute power. The country was in turmoil. Large swaths of the population were impoverished while the nobility enjoyed a life of excess. It was on that fateful day that tensions erupted.

The Bundesbank’s Money Museum in Frankfurt offers insights into the topics of cash, book money, money policy and money globally – and also presents visitors with a gold bar.

The guineas were introduced in 1663 and remained the principal British gold coin up until 1816. They came into being in the aftermath of the English Civil War (1642–1649). During the war, England was declared a free commonwealth but the English Republic lasted less than 20 years.

I dream of a social art, wrote Victor Vasarely as early as 1953 in his “Notes Brutes” [Rough notes]. The crowds, the masses, a multitude of beings, this is the new dimension. See the unlimited space, the truth of structures. Art is the plastic aspect of the community.

Each exhibition in the series "Perspektiven der Gegenwart" [Contemporary Perspectives] is accompanied by a brochure containing an introductory text in German on the artists' oeuvre and numerous illustrations of selected works.

A picture by Rupprecht Geiger provokes an immediate response: the force of the colour is well-nigh overpowering. This shade of red, which the artist intersperses time and again with hints of pink or orange, triggers associations of peril and passion.

His pictures and sculptures are the perfect symbiosis of beauty and rationality. Just about every work that Max Bill produced can be deciphered as a verifiable solution to a mathematical problem, without becoming overladen with meaning.

Vortragsveranstaltungen und Lehrerfortbildung

There is no mistaking the heads of Horst Antes. Their stark profile and, above all, their schematic stylisation have become the artist’s trademark. They appear in Antes’ paintings as Kopffüssler [Head-and-foot figures] or in public spaces as large-scale steel sculptures.

A young woman with her dog looks out, keenly and slightly provocatively, from the sketched frame of a locket. Clearly based on a photograph, the portrait appears artificial and as from another age, mainly as a result of the distortion of colours.

Even though it was created in 1936, from today’s perspective "Die Sinnende" [The contemplative woman] appears as if the huge dislocations of the following decade were already being depicted in the portrait of this young woman

Karl Otto Götz, the only German member of the international COBRA group, was one of the few artists who attempted to provide theoretical underpinning and gain public attention for the abstract gestural painting of the post-war period.

Mondrian’s later works – The Victory Boogie Woogie – those lights! That is where we see vibration being incorporated into painting for the first time. It seemed to me […] that he was on the verge of bringing a visual motion into the picture, wrote the Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto, who lived and worked in Paris.

A red figure is firmly ensconced on the forecourt of the Bundesbank’s Oldenburg branch. Like an oversized marionette, it sits in the centre of a four-part sculpture series by Bogomir Ecker which extends inside the building.

Alf Lechner’s sculptures are defined by his choice of material – steel. He works virtually exclusively with this material, creating works which often weigh hundreds of kilos. The monumental steel forms are stamped, pressed, broken, cut and rolled into shape during the production process according to his precise specifications.

The relationship between nature and culture plays a key role in Tony Cragg’s work. He wants to create objects ‘that exist neither in nature nor in our functional world’. To this end he uses a wide range of natural and industrially manufactured materials.

Ida Kerkovius, born in 1879, belongs to the first generation of female artists who, albeit under difficult conditions and against much resistance, received professional training and were able to steadily pursue an artistic career thereafter.

Das Emissionsvolumen am deutschen Rentenmarkt belief sich im Juni 2023 auf brutto 168,7 Mrd € (Vormonat: 168,8 Mrd €). Nach Abzug der Tilgungen und unter Berücksichtigung der Eigenbestandsveränderungen der Emittenten wurden inländische Schuldverschreibungen für netto 22,9 Mrd € begeben.

Germany’s current account posted a surplus of €29.6 billion in June 2023, up €21.4 billion on the previous month’s level. This was because invisible current transactions, which comprise services as well as primary and secondary income, switched to a surplus, and there was a larger surplus on the goods account. 

A key aspect of Albrecht Schäfer’s work is his exploration and use of space. His installations are not just stand-alone artworks; they also draw in and on the surrounding area. His “Kronleuchter” [Chandelier], on display in the foyer of the Bundesbank’s branch in Berlin, stretches the length and breadth of two floors.

The feeling of living in a world full of interchangeable personal narratives and uniform biographies is a commonplace in modernism. Not only is almost every region on earth characterised by identical consumer possibilities and choices; the general principles, aspirations, desires and dreams of humans across the globe have, moreover, long since been standardised by the pervasiveness of media communication.