SCHAFFER, HANS

(1886-1967)

bureaucrat; State Secretary in the Finance Ministry during the early years of the depression.* Born to a Jewish industrialist in Breslau (now Poland's* Wroclaw), he studied economics and history before taking a doctorate in law. He had founded a legal practice in Breslau before he served at the front (1917-1918) in World War I.

Although Schaffer was politically unattached, he was a convinced democrat and formed his closest ties with the SPD. Working from December 1918 with the Economics Office (soon renamed the Economics Ministry), he promoted the ef-forts of the first Socialization Commission.* In the spring of 1919 he assisted the National Assembly's* Constitutional Committee and thereafter acted asGeheimratuntil his appointment in August 1923 as ministerial director in the Eco-nomics Ministry. A patron of free-market economics, he helped draft the Cartel Law of November 1923. His expertise was repeatedly employed at the decade's reparations* summits; concurrently, he helped secure important international loans for Germany.

When Paul Moldenhauer* became Finance Minister in 1929, Schaffer joined the ministry as State Secretary. Although he urged tighter fiscal policies in the last months of Hermann Muller's* cabinet and initially promoted Heinrich Brii-ning's* economic program, he gradually deemed Brüning too inflexible. Es-tranged from the Chancellor by mid-1931, he marked his dissension by resigning on 15 May 1932, two weeks before Bruining's dismissal.

In June 1932 Schaiffer becameGeneraldirektorfor the troubled Ullstein Ver-lag*; at the insistence of Goebbels* he quit his position the next March. Emi-grating to Sweden, he helped redevelop that country's Kreuger Company. Especially interested in combatting cartels,* he took Swedish citizenship in 1938 and was active well into the postwar era as an economics consultant.