He was a founding member of the literary association Gruppe 47, and his short story Das Begräbnis (The Funeral), which describes God's death and burial, was read at the group's first meeting in 1947.

Guilt, remembrance and war experiences are central themes in all of his major works; short story collections Als Vaters Bart noch rot war [de] (When father's beard was still red) and Als Vater sich den Bart abnahm (When father shaved his beard off) recount the experiences of the narrator and his father in lower-class Berlin during the period of the rise of Nazism, while his sole novel, Ein Unglücksfall (A misfortune, An accident) explores themes of guilt and responsibility surrounding the persecution of Jews under Nazi rule.

Schnurre frequently fell ill during childhood and was repeatedly placed in the care of Christian children's homes; traumatic experiences there contributed to his scepticism of religion in later life.

[5] Schnurre, who was relatively independent from an early age due to his father being preoccupied with work and affairs with women, grew up in a lower- to lower-middle-class social environment.

[8] During his military service, which included postings in Poland, Germany and France,[9] Schnurre was repeatedly arrested and assigned to Strafkompanien.

The exact reasons for these disciplinary actions are unknown, though at least some of them can be attributed to Schnurre's refusal to comply with the Wehrmacht's prohibition on writing.

[10] Following his release from British captivity, Schnurre worked on a farm and later returned to East Berlin in 1946, where he became a trainee at Ullstein Verlag, and wrote as an art, film, and literature critic for publications that had been licensed by the American occupying powers.

[12] Schnurre was a founding member of the literary association Gruppe 47 and his short story Das Begräbnis (The funeral) was the first piece of literature read at the group's initial meeting.

Instead, he asked for "someone with a good voice" to read the "most beautiful story in the world", Unverhofftes Wiedersehen [de] ("Unexpected reunion") by Johann Peter Hebel, and that the guests engage in small talk "at the grave, or at least at the cemetery".

[22] Blencke has stated that Schnurre's "fundamental feeling of guilt became the crucial driver of his writing",[23] and that his own memory served as the most important source of literary material.

[28] Unlike many other German authors of the time, however, he did not intend for his writings to function as a vehicle for political agitation, but primarily as a means for "moral-ethical activation of the reader".

In Das Begräbnis (The funeral), Schnurre tells the story of a man who unexpectedly receives a letter containing an obituary that informs him of God's death.

[32] Schnurre employs colloquial language and uses ellipsis and parataxis as literary devices, making short, simple sentences that are strung together without use of conjunctions.

[33] Das Begräbnis, whose central themes are guilt and the loss of faith and hope during World War II,[34] was completed in 1946[35] and first published in the magazine Ja.

[36] According to his own account, Schnurre had "written the story at night on an upturned crib", with revisions resulting in a total of twelve or thirteen different versions.

Biographer Katharina Blencke identifies a total of nine types of texts, including diary entries, poems, short stories and letters.

[40] The texts touch on various aspects of Schnurre's personal life, including the suicide of his second wife,[41] his childhood,[42] and his feeling of being an inadequate father to his adoptive son owing to the disabilities he had acquired following his polyneuritis.

While inserting the window, his thoughts had wandered to Avrom and Sally Grünbaum, a Jewish couple who had served as his substitute parents during his childhood.

[46] The book was met with negative reviews and low sales figures, in stark contrast to the positive reception of Der Schattenfotograf.

[49] Scholars have proposed a number of factors that may have contributed to this, such as the diversity of his work which made him hard to categorise as an author, the declining popularity of short stories as an art form following the immediate post-war period, and the inherently small print runs and limited reception of poetry and children's literature.