I see two possibilities:
1) Exchanging their fates
Schumacher was an inmate of various concentration camps of the Nazis.
Quote from wiki: Schumacher was arrested in July and was severely beaten in prison. He spent the next ten years in concentration camps at Heuberg, Kuhberg, Flossenbürg and Dachau.[1] The camp at Dachau was intended for people whom the Nazis wanted to keep alive, and the fact that he was a disabled ex-service man gained Schumacher some leniency, but he risked his life through repeated defiance and hunger strikes.
In 1943, when Schumacher was near death, his brother-in-law succeeded in persuading a Nazi official to have him released into his custody. He was arrested again in late 1944, and he was in Neuengamme concentration camp when the British arrived in April 1945.[1]
Adenauer was in a camp in 1944 but not as long as Schumacher.
Quote wiki: Hitler expressed admiration for Adenauer, noting his civic projects, the building of a road circling the city as a bypass, and a "green belt" of parks. However, both Hitler and Speer concluded that Adenauer's political views and principles made it impossible for him to play any role in Nazi Germany.
Why not make the Nazis more suspicious of Adenauer and imprison him like Schumacher while at the same time Schumacher is forced to go into exile in Switzerland?
Adenauer dies before the election because of the suffering and Schumacher is elected.
2) Quote wiki: And on 29 June 1933, i.e., several months after Hitler was made Chancellor and the Nazis were given full police power over Germany, and while the Nazis were still busy terrorizing and murdering Communists, Social Democrats, and Labor Union officials, Adenauer wrote in a letter: "In my opinion the only salvation is a monarch, a Hohenzollern[...], even Hitler in my opinion, a lifetime Reichpresident [...]“.[10]
This episode destroys Adenauers credibility in the eyes of the Western Allies and he is barred from public office.