There’s something about Berlin that makes you feel like you’re walking inside a living history book. Every street, every brick, every building seems to whisper stories from the past. But for me, no building spoke louder than the one at Hausvogteiplatz 3.
I didn’t find it by accident. I was in Berlin for a conference—some dry, corporate finance event where everyone wore the same shade of navy and pretended they weren’t constantly checking their portfolios under the table. On my second evening, I skipped the networking drinks and went for a walk. That’s when I found it.
It wasn’t as glamorous as New York’s Chrysler Building, or as intimidating as Frankfurt’s banking towers. In fact, Hausvogteiplatz 3 was almost easy to miss—just a handsome, pre-war facade blending into the quiet square. But I knew exactly what it was. This building, back in the roaring 1920s, had been the beating heart of Berlin’s financial boom. It was the address of Berliner Bankverein, once one of the most ambitious private banks in Germany.
Standing in front of it, I could almost see the ghosts. Bankers in tailored three-piece suits rushing in and out, their briefcases filled with bond certificates and speculative stock contracts. Typists clacking away in smoky back rooms, adding up fortunes and losses on paper ledgers. This was where fortunes were made—and lost—when Berlin briefly imagined itself as the new financial capital of Europe.
But the history that drew me there wasn’t just about banking triumph. It was about collapse.
In 1931, Berliner Bankverein—along with much of Germany’s banking system—imploded. The Great Depression hit Europe like a wrecking ball, and suddenly, everything that seemed so permanent turned to dust. People stood outside these very doors, demanding to withdraw their savings. There were no answers. Only silence. The kind of silence that comes when faith in money, in institutions, in certainty itself, evaporates overnight.
I stood there for over an hour, leaning against the cold stone wall, thinking about that moment in history. As an investor, you spend so much time obsessing over returns, risk, and ratios, but you forget sometimes that finance—at its core—is just trust. A belief that the system works, that numbers mean something, that tomorrow will function the same as today.
That night, staring up at Hausvogteiplatz 3, I realized how fragile all of that really is.
But it wasn’t just a cautionary tale. It was also a reminder of resilience. Berlin’s financial world was shattered in the ‘30s. Then again in the war. Then again when the Wall cut the city in two. And yet—here it was. A global capital for fintech, venture capital, crypto startups, and old-money family offices. The same streets that once saw bankers fall are now home to founders raising seed rounds over espresso.
That realization changed me. Before Berlin, I thought of finance as something that existed in spreadsheets. After Berlin, I understood it’s something that exists in the streets. In history. In the bones of buildings like Hausvogteiplatz 3.
The next day, I skipped the rest of my conference. I spent the afternoon at the Berlinische Galerie, tracing the art and photographs of 1920s finance culture. Then I went back to the square one more time, took out my notebook, and wrote a single line:
“You don’t invest in markets. You invest in stories.“
That line hangs above my desk now. And every time I hesitate before making a bold move, I think of those men in 1931—standing outside that beautiful building—realizing the story they believed in was over.
But Berlin’s story wasn’t. Neither was mine.
