Size: 11cm./4.3inch.
Weight: 188gr./6.5oz.
 
Medal in it’s original box. On the back the medal says:”SED District Party School Ernst Schneller, Karl Marx Stadt”.
The SED was the ruling communist party of the DDR. The district party schools were tasked with ideologically training junior SEDs as potential leaders in the DDR party and state apparatus. Throughout the DDR, there was a district party school in each of the 15 districts. This school was called Ernst Schneller and was based in Karl Marx Stadt, nowadays called Chemnitz.
Ernst Schneller (1890-1944) 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 was arrested in 1933 and imprisoned. Transfer to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp followed in 1939 were he was shot dead in 1944.