Schneider was born in
Saarbrücken to a working-class family; his father was a tailor. After attending
Volksschule and an
Aufbaugymnasium in
Gotha, he studied
biology and
pedagogy at the
University of Jena, where he also participated in labour sports (
Arbeitersport) In 1929, he joined the
Young Communist League of Germany (KJVD) and the following year joined the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In 1931 he moved to the
Soviet Union where he first worked as a teacher, then from 1936 on as a research associate of the
developmental biologist Julius Schaxel (a fellow German expatriate), at the
Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Starting in 1943, he instructed German
prisoners of war at an anti-fascist school. After the
collapse of the Nazi regime, Schneider returned to Germany as a member of the "
Ackermann Group" and became politically active in
Saxony. After the
Soviet Military Administration in Germany had assumed command in
Thuringia, Schneider was appointed as a Thuringian KPD district leader by
Walter Ulbricht. Among other things, his activities included the removal of the
Social Democrat Hermann Brill from his post as president of the
Regierungsbezirk. Owing to Schneider's organizational incompetence and doctrinaire behaviour, in the autumn of 1945 he was pushed out of government and steered towards the
university system in Jena. In this capacity, he became head of the "
Ernst Haeckel House" in 1947 and also pushed for the reintroduction of the
Lebensreform magazine "Urania". During his time in the Soviet Union, Schneider had become an advocate of the now-discredited scientific theories of
Michurin and
Lysenko. In 1951, his embrace of
these theories popular with the Soviet leadership led him to a professorship at the University of Jena. In 1959, he lost this position and was sent to Moscow in the diplomatic service of the
German Democratic Republic, from which he returned in 1962. From 1950 to 1954, Schneider served as a deputy for the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the
Volkskammer of the GDR, then served from 1954 to 1958 on the district council (
Bezirkstag) for the district of
Gera, in which the city of Jena lay. Schneider died in 1970 in a car accident in Jena. == Publications ==