Tracing the footsteps of German banks in the “Near East” ...

The Deutsche Orientbank was founded in 1906 by Dresdner Bank, the A. Schaaffhausen’scher Bankverein, and the Nationalbank für Deutschland, with significant involvement from Eugen Gutmann (founder of Dresdner Bank) and his son Herbert M. Gutmann. The latter collected, among other things, Islamic art and had the so-called “Arabicum” built into his villa in Potsdam.  

Here, we first present a few photographs—discovered by chance—of a young employee of the Deutsche Orientbank, Carl Sasse, taken in 1912, 1913 ans 1914 in Aleppo, Ottoman Empire (now Syria).