How financial ruin gave rise to a dangerous new politics | The Story of Money

The 1873 Gründerkrach, the spectacular stock market crash that followed Germany’s unification, is one of history’s great financial maelstroms. But its most enduring legacy isn’t about money. Host Robin Wigglesworth speaks to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Liaquat Ahamed about how the resulting economic malaise fuelled social division and transformed old prejudices into antisemitic conspiracy. It gave birth to ideas that would resurface with catastrophic consequences decades later in the 20th century.

Further reading:
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World (2026), by Liaquat Ahamed
Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire (1977), by Fritz Stern

Credits: Getty Images, Alamy

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Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth
Producer: Lulu Smyth
Senior producers: Michela Tindera and Laurence Knight
Executive producer: Manuela Saragosa
Original music and sound design: Breen Turner
Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Gioumpasis
Podcast development: Laura Clarke
FT global head of audio: Flo Phillips
Video editors: Josh Divney and Kristen Kenyon at Podcast Discovery

Learn more at www.ft.com/tsom or get in touch at thestoryofmoney@ft.com.

Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
3:10 – Germany and Austria’s massive stock market boom
5:55 – The Franco-Prussian War and Germany’s huge indemnity
9:05 – Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the French reparations
13:18 – How French money fueled the speculative bubble
17:33 – Warning signs the boom was about to collapse
20:19 – The Vienna stock market crash of 1873
24:21 – The crash spreads across Europe and America
28:49 – Economic anger turns toward Germany’s Jewish community
31:30 – Journalists begin blaming Jews for the financial crisis
33:34 – The invention of the term “antisemitism”
37:29 – Bismarck’s political response to rising antisemitism
42:12 – How these ideas survived and resurfaced under Hitler
45:10 – What happened to Bismarck and Bleichröder
48:08 – Why financial crises create scapegoats and social fractures

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