PROMINENT GERMAN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19373, 10 July 1937, Page 15

PROMINENT GERMAN

DR. LUTHER’S VISIT FORMER CHANCELLOR INTEREST IN AVIATION (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. “I am just a travelling student, my object being to learn,” said Dr. Hans Luther, a former Chancellor of Germany and until lately Ambassador to the United States, after his arrival by the Mariposa on a leisurely return to Germany from Washington. Discussing aviation, Dr. Luther said iie had flown the equivalent of twice round the world, having been the first German Minister to use this method of travel. Remarkable developments were occurring in aviation, and he thought that the future of the airship would not be prejudiced by the recent terrible disaster to the Hindenburg. Although flights across the Atlantic had been stopped, that was to enable improvements to be made. “There is a firm will to go on,” he said. “And carefulness will be the keynote.” Before leaving Washington, he interviewed American aviation authorities who were working in the closest cooperation with a view to a future Atlantic service.

Dr. Luther paid a wonderful tribute to the American people for their sympathy and heroism at the time of the Hindenburg disaster. Within four hours of the burning of the airship he arrived at the scene by air and was deeply impressed by all that was done for the sufferers. About two-thirds of those who were on the Hindenburg were still living.

Discussing Germany, Dr. Luther said the population had increased by 1,600,000 last year as a result of births.

“That is more than the total population of New Zealand,” commented Dr. Hellenthal, German Consul for New Zealand, who had come from Wellington to meet Dr. Luther.

Few men have stood higher in the German Republic than Dr. Luther, for when Field-Marshal von Hindenburg was President, Dr, Luther was Reich Chancellor, second highest position in the State.

Dr. Luther comes of an old Berlin family; his father was senior member of the business men’s guild in Berlin.

Reich-Chancellor Cuno selected Dr. Luther as Minister of Food and Agriculture in his Cabinet of 1922. He afterward filled the same position in succeeding Cabinets of the Great Coalition, and later accepted the position of Minister of Finance. He created the office of Commissioner of Currency, to which the President of the Reichsbank, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, was appointed, at the time when Germany eventually stabilised the mark. In January, 1925, Dr. Luther was made Chancellor of the Reich, a position which he held when FieldMarshal von Hindenburg was elected president of Germany. It was in October of that year, while Dr. Luther was still in office, that the Locarno Pact was negotiated. Later he was a member of the Board of the State Railways, and of the supervisory board of the great Krupp works. In 1930 he succeeded Dr. Schacht as Governor of the Reichsbank, a position from which he resigned in 1933. When the National Socialist Party attained power, the new Reich-Chan-cellor, Herr Hitler, reappointed Dr. Schacht as Governor of the bank, and named Dr. Luther in place of the returning American Ambassador, Dr. von Prittwitz und Graffron.