[2][4] After the war, Schumann was briefly interned in American and Soviet prisoner-of-war camps and, upon his release in July 1945, sought employment in Leipzig.

After working as a sector head for Youth and Sports in the Department for Leading Organs of the Central Committee of the SED for two years, Schumann pursued studies at the CPSU Higher Party School in Moscow, obtaining a diploma in Social Sciencesin 1959.

[1][2][3][4][5] In May 1959, Schumann rose to the position of the First Secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ, succeeding Karl Namokel,[1] who was not reelected because he had shown little skill and experience in youth work.

[2] Around the time of the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Central Committee of the SED introduced a kind of socialist vigilantism, an extrajudicial self-justice, to nip politically inconvenient actions in the bud.

Schumann supported this idea by formalizing the brutal attacks on 13 August 1961, in the form of a combat order: "No discussion with provocateurs.

While Schumann was considered a pronounced "Ulbricht man," his predecessors' ability to represent the Bezirk Leipzig in the Politburo was not readily attributed to him due to his hesitant character.

Schumann was summoned to the Central Committee less frequently, and the distance between Honecker and him was visible during state and party leadership tours.

Unlike Fröhlich, who as a member of the Politburo was always well-informed about the mood within the inner power circle of the SED, Schumann could no longer rely on such informational advantages.

Especially due to the accelerated development of microelectronics, chemistry, and metallurgy from 1977 onwards, the Bezirk Leipzig increasingly fell out of focus of state economic planning.

[2][8] Following the political changes, on 5 May 1990, he was charged by the Leipzig District Attorney's Office with incitement to electoral fraud in the municipal elections in May 1989, but his death preempted any potential conviction.