The son of a railway official, Schröder was born in Saarbrücken, then part of the Prussian Rhine Province. Having passed his Abitur exams, he went on to study law at the University of Königsberg and two semesters abroad at the University of Edinburgh, where he, according to his own accounts, became familiar with a British way of life. In 1932 he finished his studies in Bonn he had committed himself to the university group of the national liberal German People's Party. Schröder passed the first and second Staatsexamen in 1932 and 1936. Having obtained his doctorate in 1934 and worked as a consultant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in Berlin. Still as a referendary in Bonn, he had joined the Nazi Party on 1 April 1933 and also the SA. He continued his career as a law firm employee and in 1939 obtained an attorney's certificate and worked as a tax lawyer. He left the NSDAP in May 1941. In the same month and perhaps in connection, he married his wife, Brigitte Schröder née Landsberg, needing - she was half-Jewish - with an extraordinary permission by his Armed Forces superiors. He held federal office as Minister of the Interior and as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the cabinets of ChancellorKonrad Adenauer and of Ludwig Erhard. From 1966 to 1969 he served as Minister of Defence under Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger. In 1969 Gerhard Schröder ran for the Office of the Federal President, but he was beaten by Gustav Heinemann, the nominee of the SPD, at the third ballot with 49.4% to 48.8% of the votes of the Federal Assembly. In the years following his active political activity, Schröder maintained a private discussion circle of former politicians, diplomats and economic officials who philosophized about the global problems of the new era but no longer intervened politically in day-to-day business. He supported the Reagan administration and endorsed the SDI program. His last appearance in the Bundestag was on 17 June 1984, when he held the ceremonial address of the commemoration ceremony of the June 1953 bloody uprising. Schröder died on December 31, 1989 in his house on Sylt. After his death, the German Bundestag honored him on January 12, 1990 with a state act in the plenary hall. Gerhard Schröder was buried in the cemetery of the island church of St. Severin in Keitum, Sylt.
