Sent to fight on the Eastern Front, he became politicised and radicalised, especially as the ideas behind the Russian Revolution filtered through to the German troops.

[1] On 11 October 1944, Ernst Schneller was one of 24 German camp inmates deemed culpable of "illegal activities", taken out, and together with three French antifascists shot dead by Nazi paramilitaries (SS).

[4] He nevertheless passed the necessary exams to become a teaching assistant, and worked in this capacity from 1911 till 1913 at Kirchberg im Erzgebirge, a small town in the mining region south of Zwickau.

[5] Military defeat in November 1918 was quickly followed by a succession of revolutionary outbursts at the ports and then in the German towns and cities.

He settled in Schwarzenberg (a small town south of Chemnitz) and resumed his teaching career in March 1919, taking a position which in the meantime his wife had been filling on his behalf.

[1] Widespread destitution, intensified by the burden on government finances of war reparations and, later, currency collapse, gave rise to continuing political instability across the country during the early 1920s.

One symptom was the existence of various right-wing "Freikorps" militias, composed of unemployed former soldiers, many of whom hankered after a return to pre-war conditions.

The Kapp Putsch in March 1920 was a revolt against continuing economic austerity and an attempt to topple the republican constitution put in place during 1919.

In Schwarzenberg, putting his military experience at the service of the post-imperial status quo, Ernst Schneller organised a form of workers' militia which was effective in resisting right-wing backers of the putsch.

However, the communists polled only 5.7% of the total vote in the election in Saxony, and Schneller narrowly failed to gain a seat.

However, on 23 March 1921 Gottfried Weimer, a Communist who had been elected to the parliament, retired and in April 1921 his seat passed to Schneller.

His military skills again came into play during the 1921 March Action (brief uprising) which this time was a Communist-led insurrection, though sources are unclear as to the nature and extent of his involvement.

He nevertheless still managed to combine his various political roles and responsibilities with his work as a school teacher, leading what some regarded as a somewhat ascetic existence.

[1][2] Involvement in the Hamburg Uprising in October 1923 led to his suffering a period of what one source describes as "persecution by the regime's justice system" ("...von der Weimarer Justiz verfolgt").

He quickly made himself as reputation as a leading proponent of the "Struggle against Trotskyism and Luxemburgism", which implicitly but unambiguously meant that he was now lining up with the pro-Stalinists.

He presented the Report of the "Parteizentrale" to the assembled delegates and was treated as "general secretary", although the position was not one that, formally, yet existed within the party.

Nevertheless, for the next few years, until the Communist Party of Germany finally split in 1928/29, the defining division within it was between pro-Stalinists and anti-Stalinists (generally identified by Stalin himself as Trotskyists).

Ernst Thälmann, the Central Committee member who emerged as leader of the Communist Party of Germany in October 1925, was a pro-Stalinist.

Over in Moscow, Nikolai Bukharin went on record with a description of Schneller as a "without political character" ("politisch charakterloses Subjekt").

[1] It was also in 1928 that Ernst Thälmann's comrade and close friend, John Wittorf from the Hamburg party leadership, was involved in a major embezzlement scandal.

On 26 September 1928 a meeting of the Central Committee took place at which Ernst Thälmann, like other party leaders before him, was removed from the leadership.

The result was that Ernst Thälmann was rapidly "rehabilitated" and restored to the leadership: the Communist Party of Germany fell more firmly under Moscow's control than ever.

He was nevertheless given a job by the Central Committee, in the "Business department" ("Geschäftsabteilung") where for some months he was made responsible for "party printed matter".

Political activity (except in support of the National Socialists) became illegal, but it very soon became clear that the authorities were keen to pursue with particular fervour those who were or had been Communist Party members.

Schneller was moved again on 8 July 1933, this time to a penitentiary in Leipzig ("Gefangenenanstalt II") where he was held in investigatory detention.

[5] In July 1939, his jail term having been completed, Schneller was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he was identified as Prisoner 764.

[1][2] Those killed included Ernst Schneller as well as Mathias Thesen, Ludger Zollikofer, Rudolf Hennig and Gustl Sandtner.

There was an Ernst Schneller Barracks in Berlin-Alt-Treptow, as well as a special home for looking after and monitoring troubled children and young people in Eilenburg named after him.

In 1977, the East German Television Service ("Deutscher Fernsehfunk" / DFF) produced a biographical film about Schneller.