Friedrich Schumann habilitated in 1892 with Georg Elias Müller in Göttingen.
In 1904, he was a founding member of the "Society for Experimental Psychology" in Giessen (renamed "German Psychological Society" in 1929).
From 1905 to 1910, he was professor of philosophy in Zürich and director of the psychological laboratory.
After the death of Hermann Ebbinghaus (1909), he was co-editor of the "Journal of psychology and physiology of the senses".
Led by Schumann, the experimental psychological laboratory in Frankfurt made an important contribution to the formation of the Frankfurt and Berlin School of Gestalt psychology (Max Wertheimer, Kurt Goldstein, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka).