Joseph Schacht Argument and Method
What was unusual about Schacht's method?
What was unusual about Schacht's method?
Schacht locates the origins of 'ilm al-hadith in the eight and ninth centuries CE, a moment in the development of Islamic legal reasoning coinciding with the professionalization of the traditionalist (muhaddith) and jurist (faqih) classes in the urban centers of the Middle East. According to Schacht the rules and standards of Islamic law are derived from four primary sources: from the Qur`an, from the hadith comprising the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions, from the consensus or ijma' of the Muslim community and from analogical reasoning or qiyas. The essentials of this fourfold methodology were initially and perhaps most clearly articulated by Imam al-Shafi`i, a noted legal scholar of the eighth and ninth centuries CE and founder of an eponymous school of Islamic jurisprudence. Following the work of Goldziher before him, Schacht argues that it was al-Shafi`i who first elevated the sunna and its constituent traditions to great legal prominence. The material importance of the Qur`an and hadith thereafter enjoyed a status comparable to that of juristic consensus, though for al-Shafi`i traditions credibly attributed to the Prophet were to be considered more authoritative than those of his Companions, and indeed could supersede all other sources of legal authority. Moreover, an already-existing legal standard based on such a tradition could be overturned only upon the emergence of a hadith that could be more credibly attributable to the Prophet. Al-Shafi`i goes as far as to claim that such well-established traditions invite no debate as to their validity; their truth simply imposes itself upon the human mind, leaving no room for doubt or speculation. Schacht points out, however, that al-Shafi`i inconsistently applies this rule in his own work, alleging that in some cases the jurist favored 'ahadith transmitted from Companions that openly contradicted those attributable to the Prophet. These traditions usually included those which validated ritual practices that were either universally agreed upon or else independently verifiable (such as daily prayer), and those which disputed the legal positions of al-Shafi`i's opponents. Building on this lattermost point, Schacht contends that far from constructing the standards of a legitimate epistemic enterprise al-Shafi`i's science of hadith amounts to little more than an uncritical acceptance of Prophetic traditions which justified his own legal preferences. These same traditions, claims Schacht, could not survive a stronger program of investigation. Although the technical evaluation of traditions would continue to evolve across many generations of Muslim scholars, it seems to have largely proceeded along the lines of the deficient form of 'isnad criticism first articulated here by al-Shafi`i. Later in Origins Schacht presents evidence which in his estimation suggests that there was in fact a large scale fabrication of Prophetic 'isnads in the generation preceding the life of al-Shafi`i's own teacher, Malik ibn 'Anas (d. 795 CE). Even in Malik's esteemed golden narrative chain there are suspicious gaps and obvious substitutions, sowing significant doubts as to credibility of the relationships he was said to have had with certain key transmitters. For these reasons modern scholars cannot be nearly as optimistic about the historical-analytic value of hadith literature as were their medieval Muslim counterparts. CANNOTANSWER
These same traditions, claims Schacht, could not survive a stronger program of investigation.
Joseph Franz Schacht (15 March 1902 – 1 August 1969) was a British-German professor of Arabic and Islam at Columbia University in New York.  He was the leading Western scholar on Islamic law, whose Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950) is still considered a centrally important work on the subject.  The author of many articles in the first and second editions of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Schacht also co-edited, with C. E. Bosworth, the second edition of The Legacy of Islam for the Legacy series of Oxford University Press and authored a textbook under the title An Introduction to Islamic Law (1964).

Life and career

Schacht was born into a Catholic family but, with a zeal for study, became at an early age a student in a Hebrew school. In Breslau and Leipzig he studied Semitic languages, Greek, and Latin, under professors including Gotthelf Bergsträßer.

In 1924 he published his Habilitations-Schrift, Das kitab al-hiial fil-fiqh (Buch d. Rechtskniffe) des abū Hātim Mahmūd ibn al-Hasan al-Qazuīnī, with translation and commentary.

In 1925 he obtained his first academic position at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in Breisgau. In 1927 he became there a professor extraordinarius, making him the youngest professor in all of Germany, and in 1929 a professor ordinarius of Semitic languages. In 1932 he was appointed a professor at the University of Königsberg. But in 1934, without being directly threatened or persecuted, Schacht, as a strong opponent of the Nazi regime, went to Cairo, where he taught until 1939 as a professor. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he happened to be in England, where he offered his services to the British government and worked for the BBC. In 1947 he became a British citizen.

Schacht taught at Oxford University from 1946. In 1954 he moved to the Netherlands and taught at the University of Leiden. In the academic year 1957–1958, he taught at Columbia University, where, in 1959 he became a full professor of Arabic and Islamic studies. He remained at Columbia until his retirement in 1969 as professor emeritus.

One of Schacht's major contributions to the history of early Islam is the recognition that Hadith probably stems from those in whom the different traditions of the past converge, and this convergence Schacht describes as "common link". This concept was later used productively by many other orientalists.

Thought

Theory of Islamic law
Schacht argued that Islamic law was not as classical Islamic jurisprudence taught,  
the product of an ordered following of four sources/components (which in order of importance/senority were):  
the Quran, 
the Sunnah (the body of traditional social and legal custom and practice of the Islamic community), 
Qiyas (the process of deductive analogy), and 
Ijma (the consensus/agreement of Muslim scholars); 
neither did its chronology  follow a direct path of Allah-> Muhammad-> Companions-> Followers-> Fiqh, 
nor was fiqh development centered shortly after Muhammad's death in the city (Medina) where he had established his state and where memory and traditions of him were the strongest. 
Rather the law arose from historical development of three different "sunnas" — bodies of custom, rules and law — operating in parallel during the period of the Umayyad Caliphate. 
The "pre-Islamic sunnah" of Arabia, 
the mixed custom-administrative law sunnah of the distant provinces" of the Umayyads, and later 
the "living traditions" of the newly formed Islamic schools. 
Unification of Islamic legal thought (so that only one sunnah remained) occurred under the legal scholar Al-Shafi‘i (767-820), when the ahadith of Muhammad became pre-eminent (except for the Quran).  The most important of the schools of Islamic law developed in Kufa in Mesopotamia, according to Schacht's research, and its legal precepts spread to other cities such as Medina.

Beginning around 100 A.H. (720 CE), ahadith of Muhammad "began to be fabricated", forming the Islamic Sunnah as it is known today. While scholars recognized that many ahadith were false and attempted to weed these out with ʻilm al-ḥadīth, this was in vain as most if not all are inauthentic.  According to Schacht, with the exception of "a few modifications dictated by the Qur'an", the Islamic "Sunna" is the same as the "sunna" of "pre-Mohammed Arabia". One  example of the power of traditional law was that under the caliphate, theft was punished by flogging, even though the Qur'an had prescribed maiming/amputation.

Schacht argues that in part the fabrication of ahadith came from "a literary convention, which found particular favor in Iraq", whereby authors/scholars would put their "own doctrine or work under the aegis of an ancient authority." The ultimate prestigious "ancient authority" in this context was Muhammad and "around 120 A.H." scholars in Kufa, "followed in a few years by the Medinese" began falsely ascribing "their new doctrines back to earlier jurists", and over time extended them back to Muhammad. Schacht also blames the religious fervor of those who "detested" use of Qiyas and Ijma. Providing suspicious justification for the "Traditionist" fabricators were ahadith such as, "sayings attributed to me which agree with the Qur'an go back to me, whether I actually said them or not." Though false, the forgeries could also be justified as recognizing the "final legitimacy of what the prophet Muhammad did and said.

Evidence of late creation
As evidence that most ahadith were created after 100 A.H., Schacht notes that: 
all authentic early writings of Islamic law are virtually devoid of any mention of ahadith of Muhammad;
the early doctrines of the schools of law were "almost always traced" to an earlier jurist or to the Sahabah ("companions" of Muhammad) but "virtually never" to Muhammad;
but "the best way of proving that a tradition did not exist at a certain time" according to Schacht, was "to show that it is not used as a legal argument in a discussion which would have made reference to it imperative, if it had existed."  In reply to the argument that jurists, etc. may not have used a legal argument in a discussion because they had not known about it, Schacht states:
a. communications in the Islamic empire at that time were good enough for "doctrines and views" to "spread easily and quickly from one juristic center to another";
b. if the behavior and utterances of Muhammad were the basis of Islamic law from the beginning of Islamic society, it is unlikely those involved in matters of law — "among the most learned and pious men of Islam" — would not know them;
c. there were not dozens but "hundreds of examples in which the disparity between an early decision and a later tradition took place". According to David F. Forte, "it goes beyond rational belief to think that these men would have been so consistently ignorant of contrary actions by the Prophet."

The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (book)

As a whole, Origins critiques the methods and standards of ḥadīth verification as they were first articulated by Al-Shafi‘i and subsequently developed by his students in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, an early and centrally important stage in the formation of Islamic jurisprudence. His research builds upon the work of important figures in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century study of Islamic law in Europe, such as Gustav Weil and Ignác Goldziher. In particular, Schacht advocates a skeptical approach to medieval forms of 'isnād criticism, which he views as fabricated and comprising the greater part of Sunni approaches to verifying Prophetic traditions of a legal nature.

Argument and Method 

Schacht locates the origins of 'ilm al-ḥadīth in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, a moment in the development of Islamic legal reasoning coinciding with the professionalization of the traditionalist (muḥaddith) and jurist (faqīh) classes in the urban centers of the Middle East.

Schacht credits Imām al-Shāfiʻī, the founder of an eponymous school of Islamic jurisprudence, with "creating" "the essentials" of the theory of fiqh (the system of Islamic jurisprudence), made up of four principles/sources/components mentioned above: the Qurʾān, the ḥadīth of the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions, scholarly consensus (ijmāʿ), analogical reasoning (qiyās).<ref>Snouck Hurgronje, C. Verspreide Geschriften. v.ii. 1923-7, page 286-315</ref>Margoliouth, D.S., The Early Development of Mohammedanism, 1914, page 65ff

Because the Quran has relatively few verses pertaining to fiqh, Al-Shafi‘i's system meant that "the great bulk" of the rules of the Islamic law were derived from ahadith.   
Schacht states that Shafi'i repeatedly insisted that "nothing" could override the authority of the Prophet, even if it was "attested only by an isolated tradition", and that if a hadith was "well-authenticated" (Ṣaḥīḥ) going back to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, it had "precedence over the opinions of his Companions, their successors, and later authorities".

Following the work of Goldziher before him, Schacht argues that it was al-Shāfiʻī who first elevated the sunna and its constituent traditions to great legal prominence. The material importance of the Qurʾān and ḥadīth thereafter enjoyed a status comparable to that of juristic consensus, though for al-Shāfiʻī traditions credibly attributed to the Prophet were to be considered more authoritative than those of his Companions, and indeed could supersede all other sources of legal authority. Moreover, an already-existing legal standard based on such a tradition could be overturned only upon the emergence of a ḥadīth that could be more credibly attributable to the Prophet.   Al-Shāfiʻī goes as far as to claim that such well-established traditions invite no debate as to their validity; their truth simply imposes itself upon the human mind, leaving no room for doubt or speculation.   Schacht points out, however, that al-Shāfiʻī  inconsistently applies this rule in his own work, alleging that in some cases the jurist favored 'aḥādīth transmitted from Companions that openly contradicted those attributable to the Prophet. These traditions usually included those which validated ritual practices that were either universally agreed upon or else independently verifiable (such as daily prayer), and those which disputed the legal positions of al-Shāfiʻī's opponents.

Building on this lattermost point, Schacht contends that far from constructing the standards of a legitimate epistemic enterprise al-Shāfiʻī's science of ḥadīth amounts to little more than an uncritical acceptance of Prophetic traditions which justified his own legal preferences. These same traditions, claims Schacht, could not survive a stronger program of investigation. Although the technical evaluation of traditions would continue to evolve across many generations of Muslim scholars, it seems to have largely proceeded along the lines of the deficient form of ’isnād criticism first articulated here by al-Shāfiʻī.  Later in Origins Schacht presents evidence which in his estimation suggests that there was in fact a large scale fabrication of Prophetic ’isnāds in the generation preceding the life of al-Shāfiʻī's own teacher, Mālik ibn ’Anas (d. 795 CE). Even in Mālik's esteemed golden narrative chain there are suspicious gaps and obvious substitutions, sowing significant doubts as to credibility of the relationships he was said to have had with certain key transmitters. For these reasons modern scholars cannot be nearly as optimistic about the historical-analytic value of ḥadīth literature as were their medieval Muslim counterparts.

Reception

Schacht's views on this matter have come under criticism from scholars in recent decades. His notable critics include M. Muṣṭafā al-Aʻẓamī  and Wael Hallaq. Al-A'zami's work On Schacht's Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence is a systematic response to Schacht's thesis. Hallaq argues that Schacht mistakenly assumes that medieval Muslims scholars held ḥadīth to be apodictically true. According to Hallaq, it is more likely the case — and indeed apparent to the careful reader upon inspecting the literature — that at least where matters of law were concerned medieval Muslim scholars judged the majority of ḥadīth as only probabilistically true. It was the epistemic sum of probable traditions, and not the assured truth of any one tradition in particular, upon which they built their legal rulings.

Legacy

Scholarly reaction to Schacht's work has produced "three camps of scholars" according to Mohsen Haredy citing  Wael Hallaq. Those (such as John Wansbrough, and Michael Cook) who seek to "reconfirm his conclusions", and at times going beyond them; those who endeavor to refute them (Nabia Abbott, F. Sezgin, M. Azami, Gregor Schoeler and Johann Fück) and a those "seeking to create a middle, perhaps synthesized, position between the two" (Motzki, D. Santillana, G.H. Juynboll, Fazlur Rahman and James Robson).

According to David Forte, "nearly all Western Islamic scholars agree that Schacht's evidence against the authenticity of the traditions is virtually unassailable." Some of the supporters of his these include Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes, who writes that many ahadith, "are apocryphal and were invented in the 8th century in order to justify innovations and tendencies which were very foreign to the intentions of the Prophet." J. N. D. Anderson, who states most ahadith were, "beyond question, fabricated," Herbert Liebesny Seymour Vesey-Fitzgerald, who states "there was deliberate forgery of traditions by responsible lawyers on such a scale that no purely legal tradition of the Prophet himself can be regarded as above suspicion."

Works

 Bergsträsser, Gotthelf: Grundzüge des islamischen Rechts. Editor: Joseph Schacht. Berlin-Leipzig 1935.
 Islam in Northern Nigeria. In: Studia Islamica 8 (1957) 123–146.
 Schacht, Joseph: An Introduction to Islamic Law. Oxford 1964.
 Schacht, Joseph: The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence''. Oxford University Press 1950, (1967 with corrections and Additions).

References

External links
 

1902 births
1969 deaths
People from Racibórz
People from the Province of Silesia
American Arabists
American Islamic studies scholars
Historians of Islam
Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom
Leipzig University alumni
University of Breslau alumni
University of Freiburg faculty
University of Königsberg faculty
Jurisprudence academics
20th-century historians
Non-Muslim scholars of Islamic jurisprudence
Columbia University faculty
Hjalmar Schacht (born Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht; 22 January 1877 – 3 June 1970, ) was a German economist, banker, centre-right politician, and co-founder in 1918 of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic. He was a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparations obligations.

He served in Adolf Hitler's government as President of the Central Bank (Reichsbank) 1933–1939 and as Minister of Economics (August 1934 – November 1937).

While Schacht was for a time feted for his role in the German "economic miracle", he opposed elements of Hitler's policy of German re-armament insofar as it violated the Treaty of Versailles and (in his view) disrupted the German economy. His views in this regard led Schacht to clash with Hitler and most notably with Hermann Göring. He resigned as President of the Reichsbank in January 1939. He remained as a Minister-without-portfolio, and received the same salary, until he left the government in January 1943.

In 1944, Schacht was arrested by the Gestapo following the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944 because he allegedly had contact with the assassins. Subsequently, he was interned in the concentration camps Ravensbrück and later at Flossenbürg. In the final days of the war, he was one of the 134 special and clan prisoners who were transported by the SS from Dachau to South Tyrol. This location is within the area named by Himmler the "Alpine Fortress", and it is speculated that the purpose of the prisoner transport was with the intent of holding hostages. They were freed in Niederdorf, South Tyrol, in Italy, on 30 April 1945.

Schacht was tried at Nuremberg, but was fully acquitted despite Soviet objections; later on, a German denazification tribunal sentenced him to eight years' hard labor, which was also overturned on appeal.

In 1955, he founded a private banking house in Düsseldorf. He also advised developing countries on economic development.

Early life and career
Schacht was born in Tingleff, Prussia, German Empire (now in Denmark) to William Leonhard Ludwig Maximillian Schacht and Baroness Constanze Justine Sophie von Eggers, a native of Denmark. His parents, who had spent years in the United States, originally decided on the name Horace Greeley Schacht, in honor of the American journalist Horace Greeley. However, they yielded to the insistence of the Schacht family grandmother, who firmly believed the child's given name should be Danish. After completing his Abitur at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums, Schacht studied medicine, philology, political science, and finance at the Universities of Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, Paris and Kiel before earning a doctorate at Kiel in 1899 – his thesis was on mercantilism.

He joined the Dresdner Bank in 1903. In 1905, while on a business trip to the United States with board members of the Dresdner Bank, Schacht met the famous American banker J. P. Morgan, as well as U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt. He became deputy director of the Dresdner Bank from 1908 to 1915. He was then a board member of the  for the next seven years, until 1922, and after its merger with the Darmstädter und Nationalbank (Danatbank), a board member of the Danatbank.

Schacht was a freemason, having joined the lodge Urania zur Unsterblichkeit in 1908.

During the First World War, Schacht was assigned to the staff of General Karl von Lumm (1864–1930), the Banking Commissioner for Occupied Belgium, to organize the financing of Germany's purchases in Belgium. He was summarily dismissed by General von Lumm when it was discovered that he had used his previous employer, the Dresdner Bank, to channel the note remittances for nearly 500 million francs of Belgian national bonds destined to pay for the requisitions.

After Schacht's dismissal from public service, he had another brief stint at the Dresdner Bank, and then various positions at other banks. In 1923, Schacht applied and was rejected for the position of head of the Reichsbank, largely as a result of his dismissal from Lumm's service.

Rise to president of the Reichsbank

Despite the blemish on his record, in November 1923, Schacht became currency commissioner for the Weimar Republic and participated in the introduction of the Rentenmark, a new currency the value of which was based on a mortgage on all of the properties in Germany. Germany entered into a brief period where it had two separate currencies: the Reichsmark managed by Rudolf Havenstein, President of the Reichsbank, and the newly created Rentenmark managed by Schacht.

After his economic policies helped battle German hyperinflation and stabilize the German mark (Helferich Plan), Schacht was appointed president of the Reichsbank at the requests of president Friedrich Ebert and Chancellor Gustav Stresemann.

In 1926, Schacht provided funds for the formation of IG Farben. He collaborated with other prominent economists to form the 1929 Young Plan to modify the way that war reparations were paid after Germany's economy was destabilizing under the Dawes Plan. In December 1929, he caused the fall of the Finance Minister Rudolf Hilferding by imposing upon the government his conditions for obtaining a loan. After modifications by Hermann Müller's government to the Young Plan during the Second Conference of The Hague (January 1930), he resigned as Reichsbank president on 7 March 1930. During 1930, Schacht campaigned against the war reparations requirement in the United States.

Schacht became a friend of the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, both men belonging to the Anglo-German Fellowship and the Bank for International Settlements. Norman was so close to the Schacht family that he was godfather to one of Schacht's grandchildren.

Involvement with the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and government
By 1926, Schacht had left the small German Democratic Party, which he had helped found, and began increasingly lending his support to the Nazi Party (NSDAP), to which he became closer between 1930 and 1932.
Though never a member of the NSDAP, Schacht helped to raise funds for the party after meeting with Adolf Hitler. Close for a short time to Heinrich Brüning's government, Schacht shifted to the right by entering the Harzburg Front in October 1931.

Schacht's disillusionment with the existing Weimar government did not indicate a particular shift in his overall philosophy, but rather arose primarily out of two issues:

 his objection to the inclusion of Socialist Party elements in the government, and the effect of their various construction and job-creation projects on public expenditures and borrowings (and the consequent undermining of the government's anti-inflation efforts);
 his desire to see Germany retake its place on the international stage, and his recognition that "as the powers became more involved in their own economic problems in 1931 and 1932 ... a strong government based on a broad national movement could use the existing conditions to regain Germany's sovereignty and equality as a world power."

Schacht believed that if the German government was ever to commence a wholesale reindustrialization and rearmament in spite of the restrictions imposed by Germany's treaty obligations, it would have to be during a period lacking clear international consensus among the Great Powers.

After the July 1932 elections, in which the NSDAP won more than a third of the seats, Schacht and Wilhelm Keppler organized a petition of industrial leaders requesting that president Hindenburg appoint Hitler as Chancellor. After Hitler took power in January 1933, Schacht won re-appointment as Reichsbank president on 17 March.

In August 1934 Hitler appointed Schacht as Germany's Reichsminister of Economics. Schacht supported public-works programs, most notably the construction of autobahnen (highways) to attempt to alleviate unemployment – policies which had been instituted in Germany by von Schleicher's government in late 1932, and had in turn influenced Roosevelt's policies. He also introduced the "New Plan", Germany's attempt to achieve economic "autarky", in September 1934. Germany had accrued a massive foreign currency deficit during the Great Depression, which continued into the early years of Nazi rule. Schacht negotiated several trade agreements with countries in South America and southeastern Europe, under which Germany would continue to receive raw materials, but would pay in Reichsmarks. This ensured that the deficit would not get any worse, while allowing the German government to deal with the gap which had already developed. Schacht also found an innovative solution to the problem of the government deficit by using mefo bills. 

Schacht also was made a member of the Academy for German Law. He was appointed General Plenipotentiary for the War Economy in May 1935 by provision of the Reich Defense Law of 21 May 1935 and was awarded honorary membership in the NSDAP and the Golden Party Badge in January 1937.

Schacht disagreed with what he called "unlawful activities" against Germany's Jewish minority and in August 1935 made a speech denouncing Julius Streicher and Streicher's writing in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.

During the economic crisis of 1935–36, Schacht, together with the Price Commissioner Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, helped lead the "free-market" faction in the German government. They urged Hitler to reduce military spending, turn away from autarkic and protectionist policies, and reduce state control in the economy. Schacht and Goerdeler were opposed by a faction centering on Hermann Göring.

Göring was appointed "Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan" on 18 October 1936, with broad powers that conflicted with Schacht's authority. Schacht objected to continued high military spending, which he believed would cause inflation, thus coming into conflict with Hitler and Göring.

In 1937 Schacht met with Chinese Finance Minister Dr. H. H. Kung. Schacht told him that "German-Chinese friendship stemmed in good part from the hard struggle of both for independence". Kung said, "China considers Germany its best friend ... I hope and wish that Germany will participate in supporting the further development of China, the opening up of its sources of raw materials, the upbuilding of its industries and means of transportation."

In November 1937 he resigned as Reichsminister of Economics and General Plenipotentiary at both his and Göring's request. He had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Göring's near-total ignorance of economics, and was also concerned that Germany was coming close to bankruptcy. Hitler, however, knew that Schacht's departure would raise eyebrows outside Germany, and insisted that he remain in the cabinet as minister without portfolio. He remained President of the Reichsbank until Hitler dismissed him in January 1939. He remained as a Reichsminister without Portfolio, and received the same salary, until he was fully dismissed in January 1943.

Following the Kristallnacht of November 1938, Schacht publicly declared his repugnance at the events, and suggested to Hitler that he should use other means if he wanted to be rid of the Jews. He put forward a plan in which Jewish property in Germany would be held in trust, and used as security for loans raised abroad, which would also be guaranteed by the German government. Funds would be made available for emigrating Jews, in order to overcome the objections of countries that were hesitant to accept penniless Jews. Hitler accepted the suggestion, and authorised him to negotiate with his London contacts. Schacht, in his book The Magic of Money (1967), wrote that Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, and Lord Bearstead, a prominent Jew, had reacted favourably, but Chaim Weizmann, leading spokesman for the Zionist movement in Britain, opposed the plan.
A component of the plan was that emigrating Jews would have taken items such as machinery with them on leaving the country, as a means of boosting German exports. The similar Haavara Agreement had been signed in 1933.

Resistance activities
Schacht was said to be in contact with the German resistance as early as 1934, though at that time he still believed the Nazi regime would follow his policies. By 1938, he was disillusioned, and was an active participant in the plans for a coup d'état against Hitler if he started a war against Czechoslovakia. Goerdeler, his colleague in 1935–36, was the civilian leader of resistance to Hitler. Schacht talked frequently with Hans Gisevius, another resistance figure; when resistance organizer Theodor Strünck's house (a frequent meeting place) was bombed out, Schacht allowed Strünck and his wife to live in a villa he owned. However, Schacht had remained in the government and, after 1941, Schacht took no active part in any resistance.

Still, at Schacht's denazification trial (subsequent to his acquittal at Nuremberg) it was declared by a judge that "None of the civilians in the resistance did more or could have done more than Schacht actually did."

After the attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944, Schacht was arrested on 23 July. He was sent to Ravensbrück, then to Flossenbürg, and finally to Dachau. In late April 1945 he and about 140 other prominent inmates of Dachau were transferred to Tyrol by the SS, which left them there. They were liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on 5 May 1945 in Niederdorf, South Tyrol, Dolomites, Italy.

After the war

Schacht had supported Hitler's gaining power, and had been an important official of the Nazi regime. Thus he was arrested by the Allies in 1945. He was put on trial at Nuremberg for "conspiracy" and "crimes against peace" (planning and waging wars of aggression), but not war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Schacht pleaded not guilty to these charges. He cited in his defense that he had lost all official power before the war even began, that he had been in contact with Resistance leaders like Hans Gisevius throughout the war, and that he had been arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp himself.

His defenders argued that he was just a patriot, trying to make the German economy strong. Furthermore, Schacht was not a member of the NSDAP and shared very little of their ideology. The British judges favored acquittal, while the Soviet judges wanted to convict. The British prevailed and Schacht was acquitted. However, at a West German denazification trial, Schacht was sentenced to eight years hard labor. He was freed on appeal in 1948.

In 1950, Juan Yarur Lolas, the Palestinian-born founder of the Banco de Crédito e Inversiones and president of the Arab colony in Santiago, Chile, tried to hire Schacht as a "financial adviser" in conjunction with the German-Chilean community. However, the plan fell through when it became news. He served as a hired consultant for Aristotle Socrates Onassis, a Greek businessman, during the 1950s. He also advised the Indonesian government in 1951 following the invitation of economic minister Sumitro Djojohadikusumo.

In 1953, Schacht started a bank, Deutsche Außenhandelsbank Schacht & Co., which he led until 1963. He also gave advice on economics and finance to heads of state of developing countries, in particular the Non-Aligned countries; however, some of his suggestions were opposed, one of which was in the Philippines by the former Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas head Miguel Cuaderno, who firmly rebuffed Schacht, stating that his monetary schemes were hardly appropriate for an economy needing capital investment in basic industry and infrastructure.
 
Indirectly resulting from his founding of the bank, Schacht was the plaintiff in a foundational case in German law on the "general right of personality". A magazine published an article criticizing Schacht, containing several incorrect statements. Schacht first requested that the magazine publish a correction, and when the magazine refused, sued the publisher for violation of his personality rights. The district court found the publisher both civilly and criminally liable; on appeal, the appellate court reversed the criminal conviction, but found that the publisher had violated Schacht's general right of personality.

Schacht died in Munich, West Germany, on 3 June 1970.

Works
Schacht wrote 26 books during his lifetime, of which at least four have been translated into English: 
  The Stabilisation of the Mark (1927) ()
 The End of Reparations (J. Cape & H. Smith; 1931)
 Account Settled/Abrechnung mit Hitler (1949) after his acquittal at the Nuremberg Trials
 Confessions of the Old Wizard, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956) ()
 The Magic of Money, (London: Oldbourne, 1967)
 My First Seventy-Six Years (autobiography), (Allan Wingate, 1955; online)

Miscellany
 Gustave Gilbert, an American Army psychologist, examined the Nazi leaders who were tried at Nuremberg. He administered a German version of the Wechsler-Bellevue IQ test. Schacht scored 143, the highest among the leaders tested, after adjustment upwards to take account of his age.
When he stabilized the mark in 1923, Schacht's office was a former charwoman's cupboard. When his secretary, Fräulein Steffeck, was later asked about his work there.  She described it as follows:

What did he do? He sat on his chair and smoked in his little dark room which still smelled of old floor cloths. Did he read letters? No, he read no letters. Did he write letters? No, he wrote no letters. He telephoned a great deal – he telephoned in every direction and to every German or foreign place that had anything to do with money and foreign exchange as well as with the Reichsbank and the Finance Minister. And he smoked. We did not eat much during that time. We usually went home late, often by the last suburban train, travelling third class. Apart from that he did nothing.Portrayal in popular culture
Hjalmar Schacht has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theater productions;
 Felix Basch in the 1943 United States propaganda film Mission to Moscow Władysław Hańcza in the 1971 Polish film Epilogue at Nurnberg James Bradford in the 2000 Canadian/U.S. TV production Nuremberg Stoyan Aleksiev in the 2006 British television docudrama Nuremberg: Nazis on TrialHjalmar Schacht appears in the following works of fiction:
 In Nancy Mitford's 'The Pursuit of Love'(1945) Sir Leicester Kroesig is 'taken for a drive in a Mercedes Benz by Doctor Schacht'
Southern Victory Series, an alternate history epic by Harry Turtledove. Schacht cameos in Volume 7: The Victorious Opposition, as German Ambassador to the United States.

 See also 
 Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933

Notes

References

Further reading
Ahamed, Liaquat. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, Penguin Books, 2009 
Weitz, John. Hitler's Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht''. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 1997. .

External links
 Schacht prosecution notes from "Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression" 
 Businessweek
 JewishVirtualLibrary.org
 Bibliography on Schacht
 
 Interrogation of: Schacht, Hjalmar / Office of U. S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality / Interrogation Division Summary, Part 1; Part 2.

1877 births
1970 deaths
Anti-Masonry
Antisemitism in Germany
Burials at the Ostfriedhof (Munich)
Central bankers
Dachau concentration camp survivors
Economy ministers of Germany
Flossenbürg concentration camp survivors
German anti-communists
German bankers
German Democratic Party politicians
German economists
German Lutherans
German people of Danish descent
German people of World War I
German people of World War II
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Leipzig University alumni
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Members of the Academy for German Law
Nazi Germany ministers
People acquitted by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg
People educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums
People from Aabenraa Municipality
People from the Province of Schleswig-Holstein
Ravensbrück concentration camp survivors
University of Kiel alumni
University of Paris alumni Schacht was an American manufacturer of automobiles, trucks and fire trucks from 1904 to 1940.  The company was started by William and Gustav Schacht in Cincinnati, Ohio. Production of automobiles was from 1904 to 1914 with over 8,000 automobiles produced. The company was renamed the G.A. Schacht Motor Truck Company and production of trucks and fire trucks continued until 1940.

References

 Schacht Cars and Trucks made in Cincinnati, Ohio 1904-1940 by Ed Hass

External links
The Schacht Mfg. Co

Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of the United States
Motor vehicle manufacturers based in Ohio
Defunct truck manufacturers
Emergency services equipment makers
Defunct companies based in Cincinnati
Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1904
Vehicle manufacturing companies disestablished in 1940
1904 establishments in Ohio
1940 disestablishments in Ohio