he studied iron metallurgy and metals science/metal physics, first at the Humboldt University of Berlin, later on at the Technical University of Freiberg (Saxonia). After finishing his diploma thesis in 1960 he became a member of the scientific staff of the Gleichrichterwerk Stahnsdorf, a company that was not only producing semiconductor power devices but was also growing single crystals of germanium, silicon and finally also GaAs and GaP. Thus, Schröder's professional career started with semiconductor crystal growth. He worked for ten years in the research and development department of this company. As it was common practice in East Germany, nearly every thing had to be done from scratch, with the consequence that Schröder was involved in the design and construction of equipment as well as in the development of crystal growth technologies. So he became familiar with different purification, doping and growth techniques for silicon and the III-V compound semiconductors. As a by-product of his industrial activities he defended his PhD dissertation "On the growth of dislocation-free silicon single crystals by crucible-free zone pulling" in 1970. In the same year he became affiliated with the former Academy of Sciences of East Germany. Due to the lack of hard money and also for basic political considerations also a "Centre for design and construction of scientific equipment" belonged to the inventory of this Academy. Fortunately, in this Centre development of equipment and working with this equipment was considered as a unit; so there was a strong interaction between development of crystal growth equipment and technological research. Schröder was responsible for numerous projects, including the development of machines for both the growth of silicon and of garnet single crystals.