Background
Schumacher was born in Stuttgart.
Schumacher was born in Stuttgart.
Subsequently, he worked and studied with Ludwig Gies, first at the School of the Museum of Decorative Arts (Unterrichtsanstalt des Kunstgewerbemuseums), then in 1935, as a master student at the Vereinigten Staatsschulen für Freie und Angewandte Kunst (VSS), the State School of Free and Applied Arts in Berlin.
As a 14-year-old, he moved to Berlin to begin an apprenticeship with a wood carver. He first worked with Berlin wood carver Alfred Böttcher. Beginning in 1932, he worked at the journal, Der Gegner ("The Adversary"), where he met Harro Schulze-Boysen.
The atelier at the VSS became a "conspiracy bulletin board," where people from the Resistance were able to associate under the guise of working as models.
In 1934, Schumacher got married to painter and graphic artist, Elisabeth Hohenemser. In 1939, Schumacher helped an escapee from Aschendorf-Moor Prison, Rudolf Bergtel, flee to Switzerland.
In 1941, he was drafted to serve in the Wehrmacht, where, risking great danger, he published a leaflet called "Open Letter to the Eastern Front," in 1942. He also gave shelter to a parachute agent, Albert Hößler, who arrived from Moscow in early August 1942.
(The designation meant he had his "own" atelier – albeit shared – with Fritz Cremer)
During Schumacher"s arrest on September 12, 1942, the Gestapo destroyed his studio in Berlin, including a large amount of his artwork.
Surviving works by Schumacher include two medalions he designed on the Schleusenbrücke (bridge) in Berlin, a basalt head and a printing block for the illustration, "Dance of the Dead" (Totentanz) at the German Historical Museum (Deutsche Historische Museum). There is a 1941 painting by Carl Baumann called "Rote Kapelle Berlin" at the Academy of the Arts (Akademie der Künste), where Schumacher"s Resistance group often metropolitan On December 19, 1942, Schumacher was sentenced to death by the Reichskriegsgericht.
Political discussions strengthened their growing resistance to Nazism. In protest of the National Socialist attack on Gies, Schumacher resigned his privileged position as master student.