Hans Schedelmann was the son of the teacher Franz Paul Schedelmann and his wife Therese, née Mangold. After attending a grammar school in Munich, he joined the North German Llyod in 1910 and the Imperial German Navy in Sidney in 1913. He served in the colonial service until July 1914, then in the Jade Minesweeper Division and from the beginning of 1915 to the end of 1918, in the Navy Airship. In 1917, he took part in record-breaking zeppelin flights in support of the commander of the Schutztruppe for German East Africa, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. After the end of the First World War, Schedelmann initially worked in airship construction in Friedrichshafen, and from 1923, he was involved in the Verlag für Historische Waffenkunde (Publishing House for Historical Armoury) in Munich, which was owned by his brother Anton Schedelmann, born in 1898. After Anton's death in 1925, Hans took over his Munich-based art dealership, but in the following years he lived almost exclusively abroad, from 1933 as a representative of Galerie Fischer (Lucerne) in Germany, Austria and overseas and as head of its weapons department. From the mid-1930s, he wrote numerous auction catalogues for Fischer, including for the hunting chamber of Prince Thun, the weapons collection of the American publisher William Randoph Hearst and for Sotheby & Co. in London. Schedelmann, who remained a member of the Roman Catholic Church during the Nazi era, was a supporting member of the SS and the National Socialist Flying Corps (NSFK) from 1934; from 1935, he belonged to the NSDAP foreign organisation, Lucerne local group, and in 1936, he joined the NSDAP (membership number 3,558.441). From 1937, he was registered with his wife Ludmilla, née Fritsch, at Elisabethstraße 15 in Vienna’s 1st district. As an art dealer specializing in old weapons, he conducted his business from his apartment.

After the annexation of Austria to the National Socialist German Reich in 1938, Schedelmann applied for the “Aryanization” of Leopold Blumka's art dealership, but withdrew his application. He submitted several export applications to the Central Office for the Protection of Monuments in 1938/39, with Theodor Fischer in Lucerne and Ernst Kahlert & Sohn in Berlin listed as recipients. Schedelmann acted as a weapons expert for the art department of the Dorotheum and wrote auction catalogues for the Dorotheum as well as for Hans W. Lange in Berlin. In 1940, he became a sworn expert for old weapons in Vienna. He was a member of the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (Reich Chamber of Fine Arts) and the Fachschaft für das Sachverständigenwesen (Expert Committee of Professional Appraisers) in the National Socialist Rechtswahrerbund. Internal party documents listed an unspecified “special position” for Schedelmann in the SS Main Office. In May 1941, he submitted a memorandum to the Waffen-SS command headquarters in which he suggested the establishment of a separate SS and police museum, which would primarily exhibit trophies of German victories and serve to heroize and “cultivate the traditions” of the SS. After the beginning of the Second World War, he was transferred to the police - as a member of a reserve unit, presumably due to his age - and held the rank of Oberwachtmeister (Chief Constable) in 1943.

Schedelmann left Vienna at the end of March 1945 and settled in Salzburg. In May, the police sealed his apartment after a complaint and the discovery of valuable old armour and weapons, some of which were of “suspicious origin”. The Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) warned of the risk of abscondment and suggested - apparently unsuccessfully - seizure measures via the Monuments Office at the City of Vienna, whereby the weapons collection showed an interest in viewing the objects. In July 1948, a People's Court case was initiated against Schedelmann at the Vienna Regional Court for Criminal Matters in accordance with Sections 8, 10 and 11 of the Prohibition Act (registration fraud, illegality or qualified illegality). Schedelmann defended himself by claiming that his NSDAP membership had been backdated to 1938 and submitted an affidavit by Leopold Blumka, who was meanwhile living in New York. The latter confirmed that he had been in a business relationship with Schedelmann since 1933 and that Schedelmann had selflessly supported him in rescuing art objects and building up a new livelihood. Schedelmann cited as references the restorer Robert Eigenberger from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, who was also subject to the registration requirement, and Leopold Ruprecht, the head of the KHM's weapons collection, who was dismissed in 1945. His statement that he had been involved in the “establishment of a weapons museum in Linz” - i.e. Hitler's museum project - also served to exonerate him. Ruprecht confirmed that he had “engaged Schedelmann as an employee” for this “special assignment” and had obtained his temporary leave of absence from the air raid police. The proceedings against Schedelmann were discontinued in September 1948, in accordance with Section 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the registration authorities classified him as a “minor incriminate”; he was granted Austrian citizenship shortly afterwards. In the years that followed, Schedelmann was again in close contact with leading figures at the KHM, was an advisor to the weapons collection and sold, donated and brokered numerous objects for the museum. He lived in Salzburg until his death, but was also registered temporarily in Vienna until 1952. The University of Salzburg awarded Schedelmann, who continued to publish in his specialist field, an honorary doctorate in 1978.