Party of Germany finally split in 1928/29, the defining division within it was between pro-Stalinists and anti-Stalinists (generally identified by Stalin himself as Trotskyists). Ernst Thälmann, the Central Committee member who emerged as leader of the Communist Party of Germany in October 1925, was a pro-Stalinist. Ernst Schneller emerged as an enthusiastic Thälmann backer with a level of haste that, even in the context of the rapidly shifting inner workings of the German Communist Party at that time, attracted a certain level of disbelief and some derision. Over in Moscow, Nikolai Bukharin went on record with a description of Schneller as a "without political character" ("politisch charakterloses Subjekt"). Party opponents quipped that Schneller played an important role within the party only because he was "smarter than Ernst Thälmann and more hard working than Philipp Dengel" ("klüger als Ernst Thälmann und fleißiger als Philipp Dengel"). Schneller did indeed receive important appointments under the new leadership, becoming "Polleiter" (loosely, "Head of Policy") with the party leadership team ("Bezirksleitung") in the party's Erzgebirge-Vogtland. He arrived with an instruction from the national party leadership to isolate the left-wingers around Paul Bertz and Heinrich Wesche. At the Eleventh Party Congress, held at Essen in March 1927, he was re-elected to the Party Central Committee, now swollen to 35 members. He was also re-elected to its inner "Politburo". Career peak During 1927/28 Schneller was intensively involved in party attempts to uncover the Lohman Affair ("Phoebus Scandal"), a conspiracy of some complexity which lasted for several years and involved a bankrupt film company and various attempts by or on behalf of the government to fund covert rearmament. In 1928 the German party sent Schneller to Moscow as a delegate for the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern. He was appointed to the candidates' list for the powerful Comintern Executive Committee (ECCI / ИККИ). He would never make it to membership of the committee, however. It was also in 1928 that Ernst Thälmann's comrade and close friend, John Wittorf from the Hamburg party leadership, was involved in a major embezzlement scandal. On 26 September 1928 a meeting of the Central Committee took place at which Ernst Thälmann, like other party leaders before him, was removed from the leadership. The meeting was chaired by Schneller. However, Thälmann arranged for the matter to be referred to the ECCI in Moscow, which gave Stalin the opportunity to reverse Thälmann's removal. The