Hans Luther was a German politician and Chancellor of Germany.

Biography

Born in Berlin, Luther started in politics in 1907 by becoming the town councillor in Magdeburg

Magdeburg

Magdeburg , is the largest city and the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Magdeburg is situated on the Elbe River and was one of the most important medieval cities of Europe....

. He continued on becoming secretary of the German Städtetag in 1913 and then mayor of Essen in 1918. In December 1922, Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno

Wilhelm Cuno

Wilhelm Carl Josef Cuno was a German politician who was the Chancellor of Germany from 1922 to 1923. He was born in Suhl, Prussian Saxony. Cuno's government is best known for its passive resistance of the French occupation of the Ruhr Area . Cuno's government was also responsible for its poor...

 appointed Luther minister of Food and Agriculture.

He kept his position in 1924 when Wilhelm Marx

Wilhelm Marx

Wilhelm Marx was a German lawyer, Catholic politician and a member of the Centre Party. He was Chancellor of the German Reich twice, from 1923 to 1925 and again from 1926 to 1928, and also served briefly as minister president of Prussia in 1925, during the Weimar Republic.-Life:Born in Cologne to...

 became Chancellor. In 1925, he was appointed Chancellor of Germany, but Marx resumed office the following year. Luther also briefly acted as head of state following the death of Friedrich Ebert

Friedrich Ebert

Friedrich Ebert was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany .When Ebert was elected as the leader of the SPD after the death of August Bebel, the party members of the SPD were deeply divided because of the party's support for World War I. Ebert supported the Burgfrieden and...

.

In 1930, Hans Luther was made president of Reichsbank

Reichsbank

The Reichsbank was the central bank of Germany from 1876 until 1945. It was founded on 1 January 1876 . The Reichsbank was a privately owned central bank of Prussia, under close control by the Reich government. Its first president was Hermann von Dechend...

. Soon after he was made German ambassador to the United States, a position he held from 1933 to 1937, after which he retired.

In 1933 Luther, lectured at the Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 campus. Luther's speech stressed Hitler's "peaceful intentions" toward his European neighbors. Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia's president, rejected student appeals to cancel the invitation, calling the request "illiberal" and citing the need for academic freedom.

After the Second World War, Luther came out of retirement to become an advisor for the new government.

He died in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

.

Hans Luther's First Cabinet, January – December 1925

• Hans Luther, Chancellor
• Gustav Stresemann
  Gustav Stresemann
  was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor and Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic. He was co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.Stresemann's politics defy easy categorization...
  
   (DVP
  German People's Party
  The German People's Party was a national liberal party in Weimar Germany and a successor to the National Liberal Party of the German Empire.-Ideology:...
  
  ), Minister of Foreign Affairs
  Foreign Minister of Germany
  The Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs is the head of the Federal Foreign Office and a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The current office holder is Guido Westerwelle...
  
  
• Martin Schiele (DNVP), Minister of the Interior
• Otto von Schlieben (DNVP), Minister of Finance
• Albert Neuhaus (DNVP), Minister of Economics
• Heinrich Brauns (Z
  Centre Party (Germany)
  The German Centre Party was a Catholic political party in Germany during the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic. Formed in 1870, it battled the Kulturkampf which the Prussian government launched to reduce the power of the Catholic Church...
  
  ), Minister of Labour
• Josef Frenken (Z), Minister of Justice
• Otto Geßler (DDP), Minister of Defence
• Karl Stingl (BVP
  Bavarian People's Party
  The Bavarian People's Party was the Bavarian branch of the Centre Party, which broke off from the rest of the party in 1919 to pursue a more conservative, more Catholic, more Bavarian particularist course...
  
  ), Minister of Posts
• Rudolf Krohne (DVP), Minister of Transport
• Gerhard Graf von Kanitz, Minister of Food

Changes

• 26 October 1925 – Schiele, Schlieben, and Neuhaus resign from the Cabinet. They are replaced on an acting basis by Gessler (who remains also Defense Minister) at Interior, Luther (who remains also Chancellor) at Finance, and Krohne (who remains also Transport Minister) at Economics.
• 21 November 1925 – Frenken resigns as Justice Minister and is replaced on a temporary basis by Chancellor Luther

Luther's Second Cabinet (January – May 1926)

• Hans Luther, Chancellor
• Gustav Stresemann
  Gustav Stresemann
  was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor and Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic. He was co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.Stresemann's politics defy easy categorization...
  
   (DVP), Minister of Foreign Affairs
  Foreign Minister of Germany
  The Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs is the head of the Federal Foreign Office and a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The current office holder is Guido Westerwelle...
  
  
• Wilhelm Külz
  Wilhelm Külz
  Wilhelm Külz was a German politician . In 1926 he was interior minister of the Weimar Republic. After 1945 he took actively part in establishing the LDPD...
  
   (DDP), Minister of the Interior
• Peter Reinhold (DDP), Minister of Finance
• Julius Curtius
  Julius Curtius
  Julius Curtius was Foreign Minister of Germany from October, 1929 to October 1931. Curtius was a member of the national-liberal German People's Party and worked closely with Heinrich Brüning to revise the Treaty of Versailles in Germany's favor. However, Curtius was not a member of Brüning's inner...
  
   (DVP), Minister of Economics
• Heinrich Brauns (Z), Minister of Labour
• Wilhelm Marx
  Wilhelm Marx
  Wilhelm Marx was a German lawyer, Catholic politician and a member of the Centre Party. He was Chancellor of the German Reich twice, from 1923 to 1925 and again from 1926 to 1928, and also served briefly as minister president of Prussia in 1925, during the Weimar Republic.-Life:Born in Cologne to...
  
   (Z), Minister of Justice
• Otto Geßler (DDP), Minister of Defence
• Karl Stingl (BVP), Minister of Posts
• Rudolf Krohne (DVP), Minister of Transport
• Heinrich Haslinde (Z), Minister of Food

Further reading

• C. Edmund Clingan. The Lives of Hans Luther, 1879–1962: German Chancellor, Reichsbank President, and Hitler's Ambassador (Lexington Books; 2010) 166 pages