MISSION ENDED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23687, 20 December 1938, Page 11

MISSION ENDED

DR SCHACHT HOME AGAIN JEWISH PLAN REJECTED NO STATEMENT ISSUED (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, Dec. 18. Dr Schacht, the President of the Reichsbank, has left for Berlin. He spent much time at the Bank of England. He did not meet Mr Chamberlain, but saw certain members of Cabinet and Treasury officials, and established contact with the Evian Intergovernmental Committee. No statement was issued, probably because the result did not justify 'it. Reynolds's News says Dr Schacht's plan for financing Jewish migration was rejected by America and Britain. Dr Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht is Germany's " wizard of finance." He was born in January, 1877, at Tingleff, in Schleswig. His Christian names, Horace Greeley, are the result of his father's great admiration of American democratic tradition, and for Horace Greeley, the greatest of American newspaper editors. The Hjalmar came from the mother, who was a Dane. Dr Schacht has given his children Danish names. Dr Schacht studied at several universities, and after obtaining his doctorate began work in the Dresdener Bank as an archivist. His great ability was early recognised and he secured promotion rapidly till, in 1908, he was deputy director. He left the Dresdener Bank in 1916 to go to the Darmstaedter and National. Bank as director. , In 1923, on the collapse of the mark, he was appointed Reichs currency commissioner. He is credited with saving Germany from utterly chaotic conditions by inventing the Rentenmark, which stabilised the currency. For this work he was appointed president of the Reichsbank; he had already refused the finance ministry. He resigned the presidency as a protest against The Hague agreements, which implemented the Young Plan. In March, 1933, Herr Hitler appointed him to the presidency of the Reichsbank again. He was also Minister of Economics, but resigned because he could not agree with Marshal Goering's ideas under the four-year plan. Dr Schacht "is a man of utterly boundless ambition," says John Gunther. "He is a complete opportunist." Dorothy Thompson (wife of Upton Sinclair) interviewed Dr Schacht early in 1931. He told her he believed in everything that encouraged German nationalism, and that he would be the man who would run the country . financially and economically.