Involvement in the Hamburg Uprising in October 1923 led to his suffering a period of what one source describes as "persecution by the regime's justice system" ("...von der Weimarer Justiz verfolgt"). He was briefly arrested and then, because of his connections to the Communist Party, dismissed from the schools service in November 1924. Elsewhere it is stated unambiguously that he resigned from the schools service of his own volition. Either way, the loss of his teaching job opened the way for a switch to national politics, and he moved to Berlin, becoming a salaried party official. The events of October 1923 were widely seen within the party as a set-back, and Schneller's immediate reaction was to swing towards the moderate faction: shortly before the 1924 Party Conference in Frankfurt, however, he declared his allegiance to the left-wing in a party that was always prone to acute and sometimes destructive outbursts of factionalism.