This brought him to the attention of Carl Legien, leader of the General of Commission of German Trade Unions.
The federation were establishing the Union of Agricultural, Forest and Vineyard Workers of Germany, and Legien persuaded Schmidt to become its full-time president.
[1] Schmidt was also a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and he was elected to the Prussian State Assembly in 1919, and then the Reichstag in 1920, representing Pomerania.
He also negotiated a major agreement with Polish trade unionists on the role of migrant agricultural workers from Poland.
At the end of World War II, the SPD was re-established, and Schmidt served on its Berlin agricultural policy committee.