Peter Reinhold

Peter Reinhold (1 December 1887 - 1 April 1955) was a German publisher and politician of the DDP during the Weimar Republic. He most famously served as Reich Minister for Finance from 1926 to 1927 in the cabinets of Hans Luther and Wilhelm Marx.

Reinhold was born in Blasewitz, and during his youth studied a wide range of subjects including history, art history, literature, economics and ethnology around Europe. After settling in Germany, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1911 from Leipzig University on English history. He then entered the publishing field in 1913, eventually co-founding ''Der Neue Geist''. Reinhold entered politics in 1917 by joining the state assemblies of Saxony, the '' Volkskammer'' and the ''Landtag'', as a member of the DDP. Three years later, in 1920, he became Reich Minister of Finance of Saxony in the cabinet of Georg Gradnauer, a position he was let go of that year but which he returned to from 1924 to 1926. During this time he heavily criticized then Reich Minister of Finance, Otto von Schlieben, for his "faulty revenue estimates" and instead suggested using a surplus and deficit.

Six years later, in the cabinet of Hans Luther, he was appointed Reich Minister for Finance. During this time, he suggested using tax cuts to stimulate the economy, but that it relied on the Reichstag stopped voting on expenditures. He described this strategy as "close to the limit of a deficit", a position that had never been done by his predecessors, but also prioritized making sure Dawes Plan payments would go through. In the end, his suggestions were eliminated by interest groups and it causing budgetary difficulties and he restored to a strict limit on spending. Following the rest of the cabinet, he resigned in December 1926 but kept the position until January 1927.

During his later years of his career he was a member of the Reichstag for Wahlkreis 19 from 1928 to 1932, and was a member of the supervisory board of many banks, and became a lecturer in the United States from 1927 to 1928 to advocate for the Dawes Plan at the Institute of Policy at Williams College. The last important position he would hold was as Chairman of the Merck Group - his wife was also part of the Merck family as the daughter of Carl Emanuel Merck - from 1953 until his death in 1955. Provided by Wikipedia