Dr. Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht is a German economist and the current president of the Reichsbank as well as chairman of the liberal Nationalliberale Partei (NLP).
History[]
Early life[]
Schacht was born in Tingleff, Schleswig-Holstein, to William Leonhard Ludwig Maximillian Schacht and Danish baroness Constanze Justine Sophie von Eggers. His parents, who had spent years in the United States, originally decided on the name Horace Greeley Schacht, in honor of the American journalist Horace Greeley. However, they yielded to the insistence of the Schacht family grandmother, who firmly believed the child's given name should be Danish. Schacht studied medicine, philology and political science before earning a doctorate in economics in 1899 — his thesis was on mercantilism.
He joined the Dresdner Bank in 1903, where he became deputy director from 1908 to 1915. He was then a member of the committee of direction of the German National Bank for the next seven years, until 1922, and after its merger with the Darmstädter und Nationalbank, a member of the Danatbank's committee of direction. In 1905, while on a business trip to the United States with board members of the Dresdner Bank, Schacht met the famous American banker J. P. Morgan, as well as U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.
The Weltkrieg[]
During the Weltkrieg, Schacht was tasked to serve on the staff of General von Lumm, the Banking Commissioner for Occupied Belgium (now Flanders-Wallonia). Schacht was responsible for organising the financing of Germany's purchasing policy within the country, and was summarily dismissed by General von Lumm when it was discovered that he had used his previous employer, the Dresdner Bank, to channel the note remittances for nearly 500 million francs of Belgian national bonds destined to pay for the requisitions. Subsequent to Schacht's dismissal from the public service, he resumed a brief stint at the Dresdner Bank, before moving on to various positions within rival establishments.
President of the Reichsbank[]
In 1923, Schacht applied and was rejected for the position of head of the Reichsbank, largely as a result of his dismissal from von Lumm's service. It took almost eight years for the next opportunity to arise for Schacht. In 1930, mereley months after the Reichstag election, Karl Helfferich, decided to step back from the position of president of the Reichsbank, unhappy with the policies of Tilo von Wilmowsky. Schacht quickly applied once more and with the help of Chancellor Kuno von Westarp, who hoped to convince a few liberals around Schacht to join the conservative faction, therefore endorsed Schacht to the Kaiser. Wilhelm II appointed him as president of the Reichsbank, however neither Schacht nor any other NLP deputy joined Westarps Reichstag faction.
Personal life[]
- Schacht is married to Luise Sowa and has a daughter, Cordula Schacht.