The highly visible Josef Ackermann, head of Germany's largest bank Deutsche bank, said last fall that he would be ashamed  to watch his firm take a government bailout. Now Deutsche Bank has announced huge fourth-quarter losses -- €4.8 billion for the last three months of 2008, which brings annual losses to about €3.9 billion. It also became apparent that some money from Berlin will find its way to Deutsche Bank after all, even if it is through a back door.

Deutsche Bank has reiterated its plan to buy part of Germany's troubled Postbank, a subsidiary of Deutsche Post. In a restructured version of the plan, announced Wednesday, Deutsche Bank will grant Deutsche Post a 10 percent in Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Post is 31 percent-owned by the German government via state development bank KfW, so the government will effectively end up owning 3 percent of Deutsche Bank.

For Ackermann and Deutsche Bank it amounts to a loss of face. Until this week Ackermann was one of the most confident and optimistic leaders in the troubled world of investment banking. It didn't help his image that he checked into a hospital on Wednesday, reportedly because of a bad meal. Early reports had him suffering from kreislaufkollaps, a vague German term that implies a fainting spell, but Deutsche Bank said he just felt a little off, "evidently because of something he ate." On Thursday he was back at work.

German editorial pages on Thursday morning think Deutsche Bank has weathered the financial crisis better than its competitors. But the sheen of invincibility is gone, and some writers think the whole definition of an investment bank will have to change before the crisis ends.

The left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes:

"He said last October he'd be ashamed for his bank to receive state help. With that statement Ackermann wanted to imply it would be a personal failure if his institution required a bailout. Instead it was received as a vilification of bailouts. The schadenfreude, accordingly, is huge, now that Germany's largest financial institution will have to accept some aid money."

"Nevertheless the problems at Deutsche Bank are different from the problems at Commerzbank, which wants to take over Dresdner Bank with help from the government. First of all, the public will have only indirect control over Deutsche Bank -- namely through Postbank. Taxpayers also won't have to serve as financiers for the takeover (which is being paid for in shares). And Postbank may manage to extract itself from this risky arrangement. After April it can sell its Deutsche Bank shares, and it most likely will. So Ackermann does not have to feel ashamed. At least not very much."

The Financial Times Deutschland was a little rougher:

"It's admirable that Ackermann is apparently doing everything he can to avoid taking government aid (at least no direct aid, at least not yet). But with the worst quarterly results in the history of the bank now announced, his credibility is gone…. No other bank manager has talked with so much self-assurance about a quick end to the financial crisis, or has been punished so resoundingly by the subsequent turn of events."

"Ackermann is still playing poker, still promising to come through the crisis without state help. It's a noble ambition. But now no one can conclude that public statements made by the chief of Deutsche Bank are founded on the quality of his balance sheets."

The conservative daily Die Welt calls for thorough reform:

"The meltdown in the financial markets has erased the business model of an 'investment bank' which had come to look more like a gigantic hedge fund than a traditional bank."

"By taking over Postbank, Ackermann has moved in the right direction. And Deutsche Bank will become a little bit more 'German.' The big task ahead now involves weakening the investment-banking side (of Deutsche Bank) without destroying the company's international dimension. Ackermann can do nothing more than begin this painful process in the remaining 16 months of his contract. It will be up to his successor to rebuild the firm for the coming new era of banking."