Ernst Schneller (8 November 1890 – 11 October 1944) was a German school teacher. In 1914 he volunteered to join the army when war broke out. Sent to fight on the Eastern Front, he became politicised and radicalised, especially as the ideas behind the Russian Revolution filtered through to the German troops. After the war he joined first the Social Democratic Party and then, in 1920, the recently launched Communist Party of Germany. He served as a regional member ("Landtagsabgeordneter") of parliament in the Saxon parliament ("Landtag") between 1921 and 1924, and then between 1924 and 1933 as a member ("Reichstagsabgeordneter") of the national parliament ("Reichstag"). He was arrested in 1933 and imprisoned. Transfer to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp followed in 1939. On 11 October 1944, Ernst Schneller was one of 24 German camp inmates deemed culpable of "illegal activities", taken out, and together with three French antifascists shot dead by Nazi paramilitaries (SS). Life Provenance and early years Ernst Schneller was born in Leipzig, the sixth child of a railway official. His father was also a veteran of the Royal Saxon Army. His father died in 1895 but there are nevertheless indications that aspects of the family's military tradition were inherited by the son. He attended a teacher training institution from which he briefly withdrew in 1910 under circumstances that remain unclear. He nevertheless passed the necessary exams to become a teaching assistant, and worked in this capacity from 1911 till 1913 at Kirchberg im Erzgebirge, a small town in the mining region south of Zwickau. He then passed more exams and became a qualified teacher, moving to a school in Leipzig. War broke out in July 1914 and Schneller unhesitatingly volunteered for military service. In 1916 he was sent on an officers' training course, after which he was promoted to the rank of Leutnant. Further promotions followed. By 1917/1918, still on the Eastern Front, Ernst Schneller was serving as a "Bataillonsadjutant". He also found time, in 1916, to marry Hilde (1894–1989). A return to teaching amid postwar instability Military defeat in November 1918 was quickly followed by a succession of revolutionary outbursts at the ports and then in the German towns and cities. Revolutionary sentiments were also prevalent among soldiers in the defeated armies, especially on the Eastern Front where Ernst Schneller was one of those elected to membership of a Soldiers' Council (sometimes translated as "Soldiers' soviet").