Hans Schäffer (Ministerial Officer)

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Hans Louis Schäffer (born April 11, 1886 in Breslau , † March 20, 1967 in Jönköping , Sweden ) was a German ministerial official and financial expert.

Life and work

Youth and legal work

Schäffer was born the son of a manufacturer. After graduating from the Johannesgymnasium in Breslau , he studied law, political science and history at the universities in Geneva and Breslau. He received his PhD in 1908 for Dr. jur. (Dissertation: The foreign sovereign rights of the individual German states ), passed the second state examination in 1913 and then worked as a lawyer at the Higher Regional Court in Breslau . He then took part in the First World War as a soldier .

Public offices

At the end of 1918, Schäffer was appointed to the Reichswirtschaftsamt as a secret government councilor and lecturer , and from 1919 had worked in the same function in the Reichswirtschaftsministerium . In 1923 he took over the management of the economic policy department as ministerial director. Schäffer was appointed State Secretary to the Reich Ministry of Finance on December 28, 1929 and worked under Reich Ministers Paul Moldenhauer and Hermann Dietrich . During his tenure he made a name for himself as a leading German financial expert and took part in international reparations conferences. His detailed diary from this period, which he wrote on the basis of shorthand notes made during cabinet meetings and other important deliberations , is an important source for the Brüning era . It is kept in the Munich Institute for Contemporary History . In the spring of 1932 he resigned in the dispute over the beer tax , the increase of which Brüning believed he could not enforce after a strike by the innkeepers. Schäffer, who since the beginning of the global economic crisis had repeatedly struggled to maintain the solvency of the empire, then resigned from the civil service.

Ullstein publishing house and exile

From May 1932, together with Allen W. Dulles , Marcus Wallenberg and Jean Monnet, he had supervised the restructuring of the Swedish match manufacturer Svenska Tändsticks Aktiebolaget (STAB). In addition, from 1932 he was general director of Ullstein Verlag .

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Schäffer was dismissed because he was of Jewish faith . He emigrated to Sweden in July 1933 , received Swedish citizenship in 1938 and worked as a manager (legal and financial advisor) for STAB until 1962. From there, Schäffer maintained contact with the resistance group of July 20, 1944 through intermediaries . He also kept in touch with the Kreisau Circle . In 1952/53 he acted as an advisor to the Swedish delegation at the London Debt Conference . In 1957 he became president of the "Council of Jews from Germany".

Major works

  • Cartels and corporations , 1928
  • The problems of the capitalist present , 1931
  • Marcus Wallenberg and the German banking crisis in 1931 - an insider reports. Edmund Steinschulte, Wiesbaden-Amöneburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-86778-005-6 .

Honors

literature

  • Eckhard Wandel : Hans Schäffer - helmsman in economic and political crises 1886–1967 . DVA, Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-421-01682-8 .
  • Udo Wengst:  Schäffer, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 518 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Pontus Rudberg: The Swedish Jews and the victims of Nazi terror, 1933-1945 . Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala 2015, ISBN 978-91-554-9358-5 .
  • Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 .
  • Schäffer, Hans , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 328
  • Schäffer, Hans , in: Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . Volume 5. Chernivtsi, 1931, p. 384
  • Schäffer, Hans , in: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical handbook of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 638

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schäffer, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schäffer, Hans Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative lawyer and ministerial official
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1967
Place of death Jonkoping , Sweden