Germany - Personal background

Gerhard Schröder was born in Mossenburg, a small town in Lower Saxony, on 7 April 1944. His birth occurred a few days before his father, a conscript in the German military, died on the eastern front in World War II. Schröder grew up in poverty; his widowed mother took cleaning jobs to raise the family. He had to leave school at the age of 14 to find a job. He worked as a hardware salesman before finishing secondary school. As a student, he proved himself an articulate speaker and an able debater. It was this struggle to get started in life, some observers say, that gave him a strong belief in the need for equal opportunity and propelled him into leftist politics.

Schröder took evening classes to get into college. With the support of the government, he studied law at Göttingen University during the turbulence of the late 1960s. During his college years, Schröder became involved in leftist politics. He led the Young Socialists, a youth organization of the SDP in the district of Hannover, the state capital of Lower Saxony. He was a mainstream Marxist and demonstrated against the installation of U.S. nuclear missiles in West Germany. In 1972, he continued his postgraduate judicial service training and received his law degree in 1976 at the age of 32. From 1976 until 1990, Schröder was employed as a lawyer in Hannover. Prior to the election, he served as a supervisory board member of Volkswagen AG and Norddeutsche Landesbank.

Schröder married Doris Kopf, his fourth wife, in 1997. Kopf, a journalist from Bavaria, assisted on Schröder's national election campaign. The Schröders have an apartment in Hannover.