Hans Luther

Hans Luther (listen^ⓘ) (10 March 1879 – 11 May 1962) was a German politician and Chancellor of Germany for 482 days in 1925 to 1926. As Minister of Finance he helped stabilize the Mark during the hyperinflation of 1923. From 1930 to 1933, Luther was head of the Reichsbank and from 1933 to 1937 he served as German Ambassador to the United States.

Hans Luther was born in Berlin on 10 March 1879 into a Lutheran family as the son of Otto (1848–1912), a well-off merchant, and Wilhelmine Luther (née Hübner).

After attaining the Abitur at the Leibniz-Gymnasium/Berlin, Luther studied law at Geneva, Kiel and Berlin from 1897 to 1901. His teachers included Otto von Gierke, Franz von Liszt, Heinrich Brunner, Gustav von Schmoller and Hugo Preuss. In 1904, Luther was awarded a Dr.jur. for his dissertation Die Zuständigkeit des Bundesrats zur Entscheidung von Thronstreitigkeiten innerhalb des Deutschen Reiches. He passed the Assessor exam in 1906 and worked in the Prussian administration, in 1906/07 at the city council of Charlottenburg, now a part of Berlin.

Luther was married twice. From 1907–1924 to Gertrud (née Schmidt, 1880–1924) and from 1953 to Gertrud Sioli (née Mautz). He had three daughters from his first marriage.

In 1907, Luther was elected to the Magdeburg city council where he increased the area assigned to Schreber garden tenfold and litigated against the regional potash industry for polluting the drinking water. From February 1913 to the summer of 1918, Luther was a member of the board of the Preußischer Städtetag (later Deutscher Städtetag). In the summer of 1918, he became Oberbürgermeister (mayor) of Essen. During the Revolution he managed to convince the revolutionary workers' and soldiers' councils to cooperate with the city administration and to accept the mayor's leading role. Ex-officio, as mayor of Essen, he was a member of the Vorläufiger Reichswirtschaftsrat from 1920.

During the creation of the cabinet of Wilhelm Cuno in November 1922, Luther was offered the Reichswirtschaftsministerium (Economic Affairs) and the Reichsinnenministerium (Interior) but he refused both. However, on 1 December 1922 he took over the Reichsministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (food and agriculture). His predecessor, Karl Müller had been forced to resign after only three days in office due to allegations about connections to Rhenish separatists. Luther remained in this office in the cabinet of Gustav Stresemann, focussing on ensuring food supplies for those groups of the population hardest hit by inflation.

When Streseman reshuffled his cabinet on 6 October 1923, Luther took over the Ministry of Finance and kept that portfolio in the two cabinets led by Wilhelm Marx which followed. Luther thus was in charge of the currency reform which ended the hyperinflation and introduced a new stable Mark. By 15 October, Luther presented a plan that combined elements of a reform by economist Karl Helfferich with ideas of Luther's predecessor Rudolf Hilferding. With the help of the emergency law (Ermächtigungsgesetz) of 13 October 1923 which gave the government the power to issue decrees on financial and economic matters, the plan was implemented that same day, 15 October 1923. The restrictive monetary policy by Hjalmar Schacht at the Reichsbank helped to stabilize the currency, as did steps taken by Luther to close the budget deficit. On the revenue side, he pushed through three emergency tax hikes, brought forward due dates for taxes, increased prepayments of assessed taxes, raised the sales tax, taxed inflation gains and reorganized the financial burden sharing between Reich and Länder. On the spending side, Luther managed a drastic cut in personnel costs – by reducing the number of Reich employees by almost 25% over four months, a freeze on promotions and fixing public salaries at a level lower than that of 1913.

Having successfully stabilized the currency, Luther then was a member of the German delegation at the London conference of 1924 in July and August 1924, where he was in charge of trade policy and financial policy issues. On 30 August 1924, the Rentenmark was replaced as legal tender by the Reichsmark, a new gold-backed currency.