Frankfurt

Population: 615,000. Metropolitan area: 2.5 million. Unofficial financial capia the Federal Republic of Germany (population: 61 million). Political capital: Bonn. Location: on the Main river, in the state of Hesse in southwest Germany Economy: Seat of the Bundesbank (central bank) and the three biggest commercial banks in Germany: Commerzbank, Deutschebank, Dresdner. The city's stock exchange is Germany's largest. Newspaper, magazine, book publishing, and printing center; road, rail, and air hub. Site of international fairs, including those for books, food, furs, automobiles, and capital goods. Germany is a member of the European Community (EQ and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and is a signatory to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

> Background Briefing

Outside Frankfurt am Main's cavernous Hauptbahnhof, one of Europe's largest railroad stations, an enterprising travel agent has put up a prominent sign that reads: "It's better in the Bahamas." Even the serious bankers and managers, advancing relentlessly along streets that are often wet or icy, raise a wistful smile in the comfort of their BMWs, MercedesBenzes, and Porsches. Then it's back to battling the traffic on their way to skyscraper offices and the making of more D marks or any other currency, for Frankfurt is second only to London in the European foreign exchange business.

Banks, banks, and more banks. There are 370 altogether, 230 of them foreign, most of them clustered around the huge Bundesbank complex of buildings. There are also 128 insurance companies, and the city is headquarters as well for such giant industrial concerns as AEG and Hoec hst. Just outside of town are grouped the major foreign corporations. Beyond them, the massive, modern airport disgorges and engulfs thousands of business travelers each day.

Trade has been Frankfurt's lifeblood ever since it was known as the "ford of the Franks," first mentioned in dispatches by the Emperor Charlemagne, in 794 Am By 1361, rich traders were using some 117 houses for the annual autumn trade fair. A chronicler wrote, "The fair has the same significance as the flooding of the Nile, except that what is left behind on the banks of the Main is not silt, but gold." It's pretty much the same story today whenever thousands of exhibitors and visitors leave after one of the big trade fairs that follow each other throughout the year, except in July.

German kings and emperors were crowned in Frankfurt from the middle of the 1500s, and the first German national assembly met in 1848 in a building on the ancient Romerberg square. Most of the central city was flattened by Allied bombing during World War II, but the burghers have built replicas of many of the old houses that give some character to a city nicknamed "Bankfurt" and "Mainhattan."

Business Frankfurt isn't pretty, or even architecturally impressive. Its style is modern monolithic. If the typical office building says anything at all about the owners and occupiers, it is that they're too busy making money to make cultural statements. Frankfurt thus lacks the chic of Munich or even Dusseldorf, but it does rival Hamburg as the richest city in West Germany or Europe, for that matter. The locals' sartorial style is cut from the same cloth as their architecture, so to speak: it's expensive rather than adventurous.

Even so, Frankfurt is rapidly acquiring some cosmopolitan polish. The big banks have bought a lot of real estate in the old red light Kaiserstrasse district, and as the girls have moved out, the gourmet food stores and fashionable boutiques have moved in. The Alte Oper, the opera house seriously damaged in the war, has been rebuilt; and there is now an impressive parade of museums and art galleries on the Main river's southern bank.

Few wartime scars now remain, except in the mental and political senses. Most Germans do not forget World War 11 and the fact that theirs was once a divided country, its border with former East Germany disfigured by a high, wire mesh fence designed to prevent that communist state's citizens from defecting to the West. Frankfurt is, furthermore, a U.S. Army garrison town, its commanding general and his staff housed in the former headquarters of I.G. Farben, the giant chemicals combine dismantled by the Allies after World War II.