Political Control of The State Bank
Although the State Bank was always politically subordinate to the G.D.R. government, this was made explicit by a law of 19 December 1974 which defined the State Bank as an organ of the Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic and formalised the practice of the Bank’s president being a member of the Council of Ministers. While this stood in stark contrast to the political independence of West Germany’s Bundesbank it was common during this era for there to be political control over the nation’s Central Bank-–though not usually to the extent found in East Germany and the other Eastern Bloc economies, where the polices and technical operation of the Central Bank were completely subservient to policies of the governing Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
The State Bank of the GDR was also a member of the International Bank for Economic Co-operation, a Comecon organisation founded in 1957 with its headquarters in Moscow. The nominal currencies used for trading, international clearing and settlement purposes by this organisation were transfer roubles and gold reserves.
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