Robert Wolfgang Schnell was born in Barmen, Germany, into a middle-class family; his father was a bank clerk.

During Nazi rule, he worked as a laborer, then as a laboratory technician and was conscripted into the tax office in the city of Mülheim an der Ruhr.

Robert Wolfgang Schnell was a writer first and foremost an author conventionally-realistic narrated novels and short stories, in which preferably "little people" and outsiders were described in their Berlin environment which to the author presented a counterpoint to the critically viewed contemporary society.

Schnelle, a member of the PEN Centre Germany received in 1970 the "Eduard von der Heydt" Culture Prize of the city of Wuppertal.

His final resting place is in a specially marked grave, an "Ehrengrab" of the city of Berlin in the state-owned cemetery Ruhleben, entry XXIV-192nd