Milestones of the German capital market

History teaches us that long-term investing in productive capital is the safest path to wealth. We walk you through the centuries of German financial history.

• 1558: Founding of the Hamburg Exchange — Germany’s oldest financial centre.
• 1685: First share trading in Frankfurt; the Frankfurt Exchange establishes itself as a key European hub.
• 1870–1873: The Gründerzeit boom after the founding of the German Reich and the subsequent Gründerkrach — Germany’s first major speculative crash.
• 1924: Currency reform after hyperinflation; reconstruction of the equity culture under the Reichsmark.
• 1948: Deutsche Mark introduced — start of the West German economic miracle and a slow return of capital markets.
• 1988: Launch of the DAX as the nation’s most important economic barometer.
• 1996: IPO of Deutsche Telekom — the “T-Aktie” brings millions of retail investors into the stock market for the first time.
• 2000–2003: Burst of the Neuer Markt dot-com bubble — a generation of retail investors leaves the market disillusioned.
• 2007–2009: Global financial crisis hits the DAX hard, but lays the foundation for one of the longest bull markets in German history.
• 2021: DAX expansion from 30 to 40 stocks — adapting to a more diversified economy.
• 2026: Today the DAX trades fully digitally on Xetra and competes globally with the S&P 500 and the Euro Stoxx 50 for investor capital.

The lesson from 500 years

Whether 1558, 1873 or 2008 — every crisis was followed by a recovery, and every recovery rewarded patient investors. Anyone who invested broadly in the German market for at least 15 years has, in essentially every historical window, achieved a positive real return. The DAX has delivered an average of around 7–8 % per year since 1988, including dividends — significantly above the inflation rate.