After his professional carpenter training, he traveled as a journeyman through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland, before he settled down in Nuremberg.
He was a member of the Bavarian parliament from 1912 to 1920, in 1918 he became leader of the general command of the III Royal Bavarian Corps, and succeeded Richard Scheid (USPD) in 1919, who was only a few weeks minister of military affairs (war minister).
He was detained again in 1939, and after the failed 20 July plot he was arrested in the Oranienburg concentration camp, and then transferred to the Lehrter Street Prison of Berlin.
On the night of 23-24 April 1945 Ernst Schneppenhorst, in the company of Albrecht Theodor Andreas von Bernstorff and Karl Ludwig Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, came out and was assassinated by a commando of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt.
This biography article about a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is a stub.