Love at a bank

The operation of financial institutions is unimaginable without the people who work in them. Their professional – and often also private – lives are recounted in the personal files that have survived to this day in the CNB Archive. These files are one of its lesser-known treasures, awaiting more extensive use, particularly for genealogical research.

The files contain the life stories of forgotten figures from the world of banking. Among other things, they reveal tales of love that blossomed within the walls of financial institutions. On the occasion of St Valentine's Day, we present one such story.

More than a century ago, women began working in banks. Among the first generation of female bank clerks was Pavla Patočková, the daughter of a shopkeeper from Kostelec nad Černými lesy and the central figure of our story. She joined the Vienna branch of Živnostenská banka during the war in 1916 at just sixteen years of age. After the war, she transferred to the bank's headquarters in Prague. Like more than half of the women employed by Živnostenská banka at the time, she met her future husband there: František Ptáček, the son of a widowed fruit merchant who traded on Prague's Ovocný trh square.

For today's reader, it may come as a surprise that, under the bank's service regulations, employees planning to marry were required to notify the bank's management and obtain its permission. This was only granted to clerks who were considered financially secure. František, who had worked at the bank for eleven years and, as head of the registry, earned a salary that met the required standard, received approval almost immediately.

For Pavla, however, love sealed by marriage marked a turning point. Upon marrying, she had to leave Živnostenská banka voluntarily, as married women were not permitted to work there at that time.

According to the documents in her personal file, the couple were married in Kostelec nad Černými lesy on 14 July 1924, and within a year they welcomed the first of their three daughters.

As the documents preserved in the CNB Archive show, much has changed in banking regulations over the past century. Yet just as in the past, so too today, personal files may still conceal stories of love.