Václav Schuster (1871-1944), Czech economist, politician, diplomat and banker.
© Article written by Gabriel Godeffroy for the Central Europe Foundation
Photo: Album representantů všech oborů veřejného života československého, 1927, p. 636.
After completing his doctorate in Law at the Czech University in Prague, Václav Schuster entered the service of the Chamber of Commerce in České Budějovice, before starting to work at the Chamber of Commerce in Prague, where he succeeded Rudolf Hotowetz as Secretary General in 1917.
After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, and the creation of the Czechoslovakian state, Václav Schuster became Secretary of State at the Ministry of Trade and later participated as Envoy extraordinary and Minister plenipotentiary in the trade negotiations with the Great powers and the other Successor states. In this capacity, Schuster greatly participated in shaping the Czechoslovak trade policy. For a journalist of the German newspaper Prager Presse, supported by the Czechoslovak government, “he will be remembered for his clear-eyed and courageous opposition to the immediately emerging radicalism in trade policy, even at the risk of having his [Czech] patriotism called into question”. From 1922, Schuster was the President of a Czech Bank, while being a member of the executive boards of numerous private companies, public institutions and associations.
“With a keen eye”, Václav Schuster recognized “earlier than anyone else the practical importance of the [economic] unification movements […] when this goal still seemed to be a nebulous utopia”.
Like Elemér Hantos, Schuster advocated an economic rapprochement between the Successor states of Austria-Hungary as the first step towards the economic unification of the entire European continent. He was the President of the Czechoslovak section of the Pan-European Union and also participated in the activities of the Czechoslovak Committee for Central European Economic Cooperation, the Czechoslovak section of the European Customs Union and the Central European Institute in Brno.
--"Minister Dr. Schuster“ (Prager Presse, 6. April 1921, p. 4)
--Václav Schuster: "Um die wirtschaftliche Konsolidierung Europas“ (Prager Presse, 20. April 1924, p. 16)
--Václav Schuster: „Die Notwendigkeit mitteleuropäischer Vorzugszölle“ (Neues Wiener Journal, 7. Oktober 1926, p. 13)
--"Dr. Václav Schuster: sechzig Jahre“ (Prager Presse, 5. April 1931, p. 12)
--"Schuster, Václav (1871-1944), Ökonom, Diplomat und Jurist“ (Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon)