He was the son of Johannes Franz Heinrich Schröder and Minna Amanda Rolfs.

[1] Schröder graduated from high school in 1911, and subsequently studied German philology at the University of Kiel.

He served as a volunteer in the German Army during the early months of World War I, and gained a PhD at Kiel in 1916 under the supervision of Hugo Gering.

He completed his habilitation in German and Nordic philology at Heidelberg University in 1920 with a thesis on the Nibelungen.

[1] In 1925, Schröder was made Professor and Chair of German Philology at the University of Würzburg.