Friedrich "Fritz" Wilhelm Schnitzler (16 December 1928 – 15 July 2011[1]) was a German landowner and business manager, and also a local politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the founder of the agricultural association of the District of Reutlingen and co-founder of the landholders' association of Baden-Württemberg, and lobbyist in the state parliament.

While managing his property part-time, from October 1962 to December 1974 he was a district councillor and deputy mayor in Ohnastetten and also served as a lay judge in the state court at Tübingen.

He worked in close association with the Minister-president, Lothar Späth; the Minister of Agriculture, Gerhard Weiser;[4] the Minister of the Environment Hermann Schaufler; the first president of the landholders' association, Ernst Geprägs; and the Baden-Württemberg state Ministry of agricultural land and the protection of land-use (Ministerium für Ländlichen Raum und Verbraucherschutz Baden-Württemberg).

He also served as both chairman of both the supervisory board and Vorstand of Südmilch AG, Germany's largest milk producer, after a financial scandal in the early 1990s; he was able to overcome the problems[2] and the company was subsequently sold to what is now FrieslandCampina and became Campina GmbH.

Schnitzler and his wife Anne-Marie lived on a 30 hectares (74 acres) dairy farm in Ohnastetten with their son Frank Christoph.