Since January 2003 the Eurosystem conducts a regular quarterly bank lending survey for the euro area. It is the first regular survey that gathers information on the distinct supply-side determinants and demand-side determinants of the development in lending business for the euro area. The paper delineates the background and the institutional framework of the survey for the euro area as well as for Germany and provides aggregate survey results of the first eight survey rounds for Germany. Main tendencies as well as the contributing factors put forward by the banks surveyed are assessed on an aggregate level. In a detailed analysis, which additionally uses the information of the micro data level, we assess the factors impacting on changes in credit standards and in the demand for loans more closely and test for their significance. Apart from the relationship between different parts of the data obtained by the survey, the explanatory power of the survey data for actual loan growth and changes in credit margins is of special interest. Using the information from the bank balance sheets statistics and the new interest rate statistics of the monetary financial institutions (MFI) on the micro data level, we test whether the survey data contain significant information on banks' individual loan growth and margin changes.