Raiffeisen (Switzerland) location of formation Bichelsee-Balterswil
History
The first cooperative banks were founded in Germany during the 1840s until the 1870s, upon the ideas and the initiative of Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch and Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, where farmers founded their own credit banks to finance seeds, machinery and wares. The idea of cooperative banks caught on in Europe, particularly in rural areas. The first Raiffeisen bank in Switzerland was founded on the initiative of parish priest Johann Traber in 1899, located in Bichelsee. In 1902, ten institutions founded the Swiss Raiffeisen union. From 1912 onwards, the union ran a collective office in St. Gallen, and this was expanded over the following 40 years by its director Josef Stadelmann.
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