Walter Gerhard Meyer was the younger brother of SCHUFA co-founder Kurt Meyer. A political science Ph.D., he had been working at Berlin-based Bewag since 1924, initially as an assistant to Robert Kauffmann. Shortly thereafter, he was promoted to director of commercial administration and subsequently assumed the role of executive assistant.

There, he played a key role in developing “Elektrissima,” an installment plan for electrical appliances. The experience he gained there with consumer credit and payment defaults laid an important foundation for the later founding of SCHUFA. Together with Kauffmann and his brother, Walter Gerhard Meyer was among the founding members of SCHUFA in 1927.

His professional career in Germany, however, came to an end just a few years later. When the National Socialists seized power, Meyer lost his position at Bewag, which was brought into line with Nazi ideology. His employment contract was forcibly terminated in 1933. That same year, he decided to flee. Together with his mother, Elena, and his wife, Else, he left Germany in July 1933, traveling via Brussels and Genoa to Argentina. Like many others persecuted by the Nazi regime, he too had to pay the so-called “Reich Emigration Tax” before leaving the country.

In Buenos Aires, Meyer quickly got his career back on track. He joined the Compañía Argentina de Electricidad, a subsidiary of the German company AEG. There, he held a management position for many years. Later, he also took on management responsibilities at the agricultural company Fortin Viejo S.A. In Argentina, he used the Spanish form of his name and went by Gualterio Gerardo Meyer.

He remained closely connected to Argentina well into his old age and traveled to Europe regularly. He died in Vienna in 2003 at the age of 101.