 The SED had been formed a couple of years earlier in a top-down process which had not gone uncontested, and by 1948 it was on the way to becoming the ruling party in a new form of one-party dictatorship.During 1948 Schürer was a student at the SED's local "Ernst Thälmann" party academy (""Kreisparteischule"") in Seefrieden.Shortly after this, in October 1949, the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic ("East Germany").