In Christ Episcopal Church in Short Hills, N.J., yesterday afternoon, Catherine Jean Wiss, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Frederick Wiss Jr. of Short Hills, became the bride of Walter Christian Schumann, son of Dr. and Mrs. Detlev W. Schumann of Providence, R. I., and Plön, West Germany.
The Rev. David St. George of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Essex Fells, N.J., performed the ceremony assisted by the Rev. George W. R. MacCray.
Olivier Chanson of London was the matron of honor and Laurence Cohen the best man.
The bride will continue to use her maiden name. She graduated cum laude from the Kent Place School and in 1969 received a B.A. degree in religion from Smith College. She is a civil rights specialist with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Washington, where she is a candidate for a master's degree in anthropology at American University.
Her father is with the purchasing department in Whippany, N. J., of Rowe International, a division of Triangle Industries. Her mother, under the name Ann Wiss, is with the restoration department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.
The bride is a granddaugh- ter of Mrs. William S. Coulter of Greensboro, N. C., and the late Mr. Coulter, a founder of Burlington Industries, of which he was a vice president and general counsel.
She is a granddaughter also of the late Norman F. Wiss, who was vice president and treasurer of J. Wiss & Sons, Newark, a cutlery company founded by the bride's great-great-grandfather, Jacob Wiss.
Her maternal great-great-grandfather, Dr. William S. Long, was the founder and first president of Elon College in North Carolina.
Mr. Schumann graduated magna cum Jaude in 1969 from Harvard and received a J.D. degree from the Harvard Law School. He is a lawyer with the Appellate Court Branch of the National Labor Relations Board in Washington.
His father is professor emeritus of German literature at Brown University. His mother is Elizabeth Schumann, reference librarian at the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at Brown.