Robert Pferdmenges

After attending school and doing military service with the Leibdragoners in Darmstadt, Pferdmenges completed a banking apprenticeship at the Bergisch-Märkische Bank. From 1901 he worked at the London branch of Disconto-Gesellschaft, becoming branch manager there after a few years. In 1913, he moved to the Antwerp branch of the same banking institution. Shortly thereafter, he was enlisted in the reserve regiment of the Darmstadt Leibdragoners, again detached to Antwerp for civil administration, and returned to Cologne in 1919 as a Rittmeister.

From 1919 to 1929, he was a member of the board of directors of A. Schaaffhausen'scher Bankverein in Cologne; as chairman of the board, he was instrumental in the 1929 merger of Disconto-Gesellschaft with Deutsche Bank and became a member of the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank. In 1931, at the instigation of Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, Pferdmenges became deputy chairman of the supervisory board of Dresdner Bank and, a year later, also a member of an expert commission on the establishment of state banking supervision. In 1932, he became a member of the General Council and the Central Committee of the Reichsbank, but left the body again a year later. He had already been chairman of the Association of Banks and Bankers in Rhineland and Westphalia since 1921; he gave up the post when the National Socialists came to power in 1933. He was also a member of the German Gentlemen's Club, an influential association of high-ranking conservative personalities in the Weimar Republic.