FRANKFURT — In November 1941, Karl Blessing, the executive in charge of the Nazi petroleum monopoly wrote a letter to a deputy of Adolf Hitler’s chief architect. An apartment belonging to Jews in Berlin was opening up, and the executive wanted it.

After the war, Blessing became president of Germany’s central bank. He was a legendary figure who helped shape its hard-line focus on inflation.

The letter, however, undercuts his image as a Nazi resister and hints at some of the uncomfortable revelations that could emerge from a new research project, which will explore in greater detail than ever before the involvement of German central bankers with the Hitler regime. The German central bank, the Bundesbank, announced on Friday that it will fund the study, which will take four years to complete.

It has become a ritual for German companies and government institutions to hire historians to root into their dark pasts. Deutsche Bank published a study of its conduct during the Third Reich in 1998. Volkswagen published one in 1996.