Schumann was born in the Soviet occupation zone of what remained of Germany, slightly more than a year after the Second World War had ended in defeat and regime change.
[2] In parallel with this, 1965 was also the year in which he obtained a certificate of expertise in cattle breeding from the VEB agricultural cooperative in nearby Rohr.
[1] His first job after this was as a research assistant in the Marxism–Leninism section of the Philosophy Department at the party's own "Walter Ulbricht" Academy for Law and Political Sciences in Potsdam-Babelsberg, which placed him at the heart of one of the SED's most important cadre schools.
[2] From November 1970 till April 1972 Schumann performed his Military Service in the National People's Army, reaching the rank of junior officer in a political section.
It was during this period that he married Ingeburg Reuß who was at the time employed on the commercial side by DEFA, the state-owned film studin.
The resolution, which marked a break with the government by dictatorship that had controlled the German Democratic Republic for more than four decades, was created by several people, including the Stasi Intelligence Chief Markus Wolf and the politician Heinz Vietze, but it was Schumann's part in its authorship that was given greater prominence precisely because, some said, Wolf and Vietze were both highly positioned members of the now largely discredited East Germany political establishment whereas Schumann's party work had been low level and peripheral to his career.