Since the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the German economic and financial system has experienced a multitude of major upheavals and shocks right up to the present day. The most severe crisis in recent history was the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, which economists were unable to foresee, in part because their impact analyses focused on too short a time horizon.

The new project aims to address this lack of consistent, long-term data series on German companies and financial markets. The goal is to collect and consolidate such data over a period of 150 years, thereby creating an entirely new foundation for long-term empirical research. This newly structured and linked data will be suitable for both historically grounded financial research and the analysis of economic history issues, and will contribute to a better understanding of past, present, and future economic and social challenges. At the same time, the project preserves significant historical data sources as part of our cultural heritage. Using new digital methods from the fields of “big data” and “machine learning,” the data will be processed and subsequently published. Thus, the research project is relevant to academia, policymakers, businesses, and the interested public.

The project began on January 1, 2025, and will run for 18 years. It is sponsored by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities HAdW) and the Academy of Sciences and Humanities Literature | Mainz (AdWL). Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Uwe Walz (Goethe University Frankfurt and the Leibniz Institute for Financial Market Research SAFE), research centers have been established in Frankfurt am Main and Mannheim.