He was born in Dar es Salaam, German East Africa (now Tanzania) to a railway engineer and a violinist.

In 1933 Schelcher joined the New Theatre in Frankfurt am Main and in 1934-1935 he played at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, from 1935 to 1938 in Leipzig and finally at the Schiller Theater in Berlin.

He was drafted shortly before World War II on 28 August 1939 by the Gestapo.

Schlecher played, among others,[2] the fool in the Twelfth Night, Jakob in Gorkis and Simon Chachava in The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

He appeared in films featuring ideal class-conscious proletarians as in two of Thalmann's movies or as the understanding people's commissar in Berlin, Schoenhauser Corner.