Schüller, Mary Agnes Craig McGeachy, 1901-1991 : Mary Agnes Craig McGeachy was born on 7 November 1901 at Sarnia, Ontario and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1924. After postgraduate studies at the Sorbonne and the School of Higher International Studies in Geneva, she obtained a post in the League of Nations as a Canadian officer in the Information Section in charge of contacts with Canada, 1930-1940. She travelled three months each year to Canada and carried out liaison work between the League and private international organizations, particularly the Liaison Committee of Women's International Organizations. She studied the League's handling of public health, social welfare, economic and financial problems and worked with the international committees on nutrition, child welfare and the legal status of women.
In August 1940, she joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare in London as a member of the Press and Parliamentary Section. McGeachy was sent to Washington in December 1940 to represent the Ministry in the United States and Canada. Working from the British Embassy she addressed a variety of organizations on topics associated with the dislocations caused by war as well as issues associated with German propaganda. During this period, she effectively countered a pro-German campaign organized in the United States against the Allies who were accused of starving women and children.
In October 1942, she was appointed first secretary of the British embassy in Washington becoming the first woman to attain British diplomatic status. Her work continued in economic warfare and she participated in inter-allied meetings and policy committees as an expert on the status of women as well as on German policy in occupied countries.
In 1943, she was seconded to join the early planning group for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and was appointed Director of the Welfare Division of UNRRA on 1 Feb. 1944. Along with directors of the other divisions of UNRRA, her work required her to travel to France, Belgium, Holland, Austria and Czechoslovakia setting up small UNRRA missions to administer supplies in each of the liberated countries.
She married Erwin Schuller on 21 December 1944. The Schullers moved to Johannesburg, South Africa in connection with Erwin's work where she became a patron of the Child Welfare Society in Johannesburg from 1951 to 1954. Mr. and Mrs. Schuller adopted two children while living in South Africa, a brother and sister whom they named Janet and John Erwin Schuller. The family left South Africa in 1954 returning to Canada.
In May 1955, while living in Toronto, she was appointed voluntary observer at the United Nations for the National Council of Women of Canada working closely with the International Council of Women (ICW) voluntary group of UN observers. Subsequently, she was elected president of the International Council of Women, 26 June 1963, serving three terms of office. Following her presidency, she served as the ICW's liaison officer at the United Nations in charge of the ICW's representation as a Non-Governmental Organization in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
On 8 Nov. 1985, the Sovereign Military and Hospitaler Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, conferred the honour of "Dame of Honour and Merit" upon her. Dame Mary Agnes Craig Schuller-McGeachy died on 2 November 1991 at Keene, New York.
Schüller, Erwin, 1909-1967 : Erwin Schuller was born on 7 Sept. 1909 in Vienna, Austria of Jewish parents, Hofrat Dr. Ludwig Schuller and Gertrude, née von Taussig, and died on 7 July 1967. He had one brother, Theodor. His father was, for many years, a senior official in the Austrian Treasury, and later, partner in the banking firm of Auspitz Lieben & Co. of Vienna.
A graduate of the University of Vienna, Schuller studied law and trained as a banker. In 1932, he worked in Hamburg, Germany with the financial firm of Rudolf Petersen during which time he observed the growth and advent to power of the Nazi Party. He acquired an extensive and detailed knowledge of the German economic system and its industries but left Germany in 1934 after Hitler's appointment as Reichskanzler fearing that his "non-Aryan" background and his Conservative and Democratic views would not be welcome.
In 1933, Schuller joined the firm of Frères Lazard et Cie of Paris working mostly in England and subsequently joined the London House of Lazards, specializing in the liquidation of German commitments.
In 1938, he established the Europe Study Group to oppose the Nazi German government drawing upon highly placed and knowledgeable individuals in England to discuss the political and economic future of Europe. Schuller was interned as an enemy alien on or about 28 June 1940 and was released later that year following his petition for release and upon the recommendation of well placed British citizens.
Schuller joined the National Council of Social Service ca. 1942 and later worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, in New York. He and Mary Craig McGeachy met ca. 1941 and their mutual humanitarian interests were a catalyst to their relationship.
He went to South Africa in 1947 to represent Lazard Brothers and to Toronto in 1953 before joining Radio Corporation of America as a vice-president in 1958. Leaving R.C.A. in 1963, Schuller became an innovator in policy for developing countries. He was consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank and the Brookings Institution, as well as to R.C.A., Union Carbide, International Milling and the Banque de Paris et Pays-Bas.
Although a financier by training, Schuller was a humanitarian who examined the human aspect of development plans. He was able to show that many projects which were theoretically viable did not take into account their possible effects on human beings. His last detailed study for the Brookings Institution was on the subject of "Popular Participation in the Development of Latin America", in which he and a collaborator stressed the importance of "grassroots" movements and democratic support for reform.
