Frankfurt tries to tempt the bankers fleeing a post-Brexit Britain

Dishing out servings of her award-winning gelbe Wurst (yellow pork and veal sausages) to customers in Frankfurt's covered market as she has been doing for 58 years, Ilse Schreiber said the British electorate's decision to leave the EU had made her sure of one thing.

"We need to stick together, more than ever - we can't let Europe fall apart." The 76-year-old said she was convinced that just as her adopted city had taken her and thousands of others in as refugees from what is now western Poland in 1946, it would now be able to absorb the 10,000 to 20,000 financial sector workers it is estimated could move from London in the event of a Brexit.

"They can come and try out my sausages," she said, pointing to the many Frankfurt financiers who queue at her stall every lunchtime. Major financial institutions in London are considering relocating thousands of employees if UK-based firms lose access to the bloc. Frankfurt - already home to the European Central Bank, the EU's insurance regulator, as well as almost 200 foreign banks - is likely to be a major beneficiary of the post-Brexit fallout in the financial sector. Spearheading the campaign to persuade executives that Germany's financial capital - the most important in continental Europe - should become the new London, is the city's social democrat mayor, Peter Feldmann, who said Frankfurt was both "weeping and laughing" at the Brexit decision. "We're sorry things have turned out like they have," he told the Guardian. "But now this sovereign decision, which everyone now believes is irreversible, has been made we say we're ready and waiting to provide the bankers with a new home." From his office in the Römer, the medieval city hall, Feldmann highlights the benefits of Frankfurt, including negligible unemployment, 1.3m square metres of empty office space, record tax revenues - much of which is being pumped into the education system - and the highest per capita cultural budget of any German city. He is also proud of the city's outward-looking nature - it is home to 180 nationalities and a third of its inhabitants are foreign nationals - which has much to do with its reputation as a trade fair location that goes back as far as the 12th century, and a banking tradition which is at least 600 years old.

"From the cradle onwards we're taught to be open to the world, to employ foreigners, as their families will become your customers, which is why we cannot understand how Britain has decided to isolate itself but we're going to make the best of it," said Feldmann. Frankfurt, he said, still takes pride in having given refuge to hundreds of English Protestants who fled religious persecution under Mary I in the 1550s. And while he would not compare the bankers to desperate refugees, "we'll certainly also make them feel equally welcome here". How many jobs might come Frankfurt's way is dependent on how many banks decide to move, what percentage of their personnel they relocate, and whether the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the joint headquarters of the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse - if their proposed merger even happens - end up being in Frankfurt, or other contending cities. The regional marketing agency, FrankfurtRheinMain GmbH, is hoping to help capture as many of them as possible.

"We built a website welcometofrm.com in case of a Brexit and were so not expecting, or to be honest, wanting it to be needed," its chief executive, Eric Menges, said. "But you know, we're Germans and very organised so it went live the night the results came in." A promotional video shows off the region's assets, and includes couples wandering through vineyards in misty sunlight and, amid the gleaming glass and chrome towers of the banking district, a man reading a book in a hammock on the banks of the Main river. The agency has also set up a 24-hour telephone hotline manned by native English speakers and the phone has hardly stopped ringing, Menges said. The inquiries so far from businesses large and small - as well as management consultants, estate agents and legal firms - have spanned everything from rent prices and the availability of luxury flats to international schools and the tax system. "I show them what a high standard of living they can enjoy here, that you can live, like I do, 15 minutes' drive from the city centre, close to vineyards and keep chickens in the backyard, or else in the city centre, but for a half or third of the price you might pay in London. And you can cycle everywhere. We have a world-class opera house, theatres, art galleries and restaurants, and everyone speaks English," he said. The Frankfurt native, whose accent is tinged with the "zish" of the regional Hesse dialect, treats visitors to Frankfurt's local delicacies albeit rather acquired tastes such as green sauce and marinated handcheese (a fist-sized pungent sour cheese in vinegar) with onions. On the menu, too, is the sweet and sour apple wines the city dwellers like so much; the headquarters of the EU's insurance regulator EIOPA has even been modelled on the crenellated glass out of which it is typically drunk. But the potential influx is nevertheless a worry for many ordinary Frankfurters, concerned that the sudden rush of highly paid executives will cause a housing market where prices have already been rising beyond many people's means to inflate still further. At the box office of the theatre, Tunc Yomolcay, 36, who is Frankfurt born and bred, is selling tickets for upcoming productions, from Monty Python's Spamalot to The Hound of the Baskervilles.