The skilled toolmaker joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1905,[2] and was chosen to be shop steward in Jena in 1907.

[citation needed] In 1916, he was conscripted, and for doing illegal work for the Spartacist League within the army, he was sentenced to hard labour, imprisoned for 12 years but freed by the November revolution.

The victorious left wing about Ernst Thälmann therefore removed him from his post as Leader in West Saxony over storms of protest.

[citation needed] Schumann co-founded one of the most active communist resistance groups that known as the Schumann-Engert-Kresse Gruppe, along with Otto Engert and Kurt Kresse.

[5] After the war, his urn was buried together with those of other leading members of the resistance group in Leipzig's southern cemetery in a prominent position on the central axis of the main path.

From 1972 until 1991, a barracks of East Germany's National People's Army in Leipzig's Möckern neighbourhood bore the name Georg-Schumann-Kaserne.

Today the Georg-Schumann-Bau is a university building of TU Dresden with a museum dedicated to victims of injustice during the Nazi regime and the GDR.