Since leaving public office, Schröder has worked for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom.

Following the 2005 federal election, which his party lost, and after three weeks of negotiations, he stood down as chancellor in favour of Angela Merkel of the rival Christian Democratic Union.

His father, Fritz Schröder, a lance corporal in the Wehrmacht, was killed in action in World War II in Romania on 4 October 1944, almost six months after Gerhard's birth.

[8] Among his more controversial cases, Schröder helped Horst Mahler, a founding member of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group, to secure both an early release from prison and permission to practice law again in Germany.

Considered ambitious from early on in his political career, it was widely reported and never denied, that in 1982, a drunken Schröder stood outside the West German federal chancellery yelling: "I want to get in.

During Schröder's time in office, first in coalition with the environmentalist Green Party, then with a clear majority, Lower Saxony became one of the most deficit-ridden of Germany's 16 federal states and unemployment rose higher than the national average of 12 percent.

[11] Ahead of the 1994 elections, SPD chairman Rudolf Scharping included Schröder in his shadow cabinet for the party's campaign to unseat incumbent Helmut Kohl as chancellor.

"[16] In a move meant to signal a deepening alliance between Schröder and Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom,[17] the two leaders issued an eighteen-page manifesto for economic reform in June 1999.

Only by 2000, Schröder managed to capitalise on the donations scandal of his Christian Democratic opposition to push through a landmark tax reform bill and re-establish his dominance of the German political scene.

[22] Throughout the build-up to the 2002 German election, the Social Democrats and the Green Party trailed the centre-right candidate Edmund Stoiber until the catastrophe caused by rising floodwater in Germany led to an improvement in his polling numbers.

After the elections, neither Schröder's SPD-Green coalition nor the alliance between CDU/CSU and the FDP led by Angela Merkel achieved a majority in parliament, but the CDU/CSU had a stronger popular electoral lead by one percentage point.

[30] In his first term, Schröder's government decided to phase out nuclear power, fund renewable energies,[31] institute civil unions for same-sex partners, and liberalise the naturalization law.

[41] In 1997, Schröder joined the minister-presidents of two other German states, Kurt Biedenkopf and Edmund Stoiber, in making the case for a five-year delay in Europe's currency union.

[42] After taking office, he made his first official trip abroad to France for meetings with President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in October 1998.

[48] Also in 2003, both Schröder and Chirac forced a suspension of sanctions both faced for breaching the European Union's fiscal rules that underpin the euro – the Stability and Growth Pact – for three years in a row.

[49] By 2005, he had successfully pushed for an agreement on sweeping plans to rewrite the Pact, which now allowed EU members with deficits above the original 3% of GDP limit to cite the costs of "the reunification of Europe" as a mitigating factor.

[53] Marking a clear break with the caution of German foreign policy since World War II, Schröder laid out in 1999 his vision of the country's international role, describing Germany as "a great power in Europe" that would not hesitate to pursue its national interests.

He also sought to detach himself from the close personal relationship that his predecessor, Helmut Kohl, had with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, saying that German-Russian relations should "develop independently of concrete political figures.

"[69] Soon after, however, he cultivated close ties with Yeltsin's successor, President Vladimir Putin, in an attempt to strengthen the "strategic partnership" between Berlin and Moscow,[70] including the opening of a gas pipeline over the Baltic Sea exclusively between Russia and Germany (see "Gazprom controversy" below).

[84] In 2016, he was appointed by Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel to mediate (alongside economist Bert Rürup) in a dispute between two of Germany's leading retailers, Edeka and REWE Group, over the takeover of supermarket chain Kaiser's Tengelmann.

[107][108] At the time of the German parliamentary election, according to Rick Noak of The Washington Post:[109] In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin's friend Schroeder hastily signed the deal just as he was departing the office from which he had been voted out days earlier.

[110] Soon after stepping down as chancellor, Schröder accepted Gazprom's nomination for the post of the head of the shareholders' committee of Nord Stream AG, raising questions about a potential conflict of interest.

[112] Democrat Tom Lantos, chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, likened Schröder to a "political prostitute" for his recent behaviour.

[125] In April 2002, Schröder sued the DDP press agency for publishing an opinion of public relations consultant Sabine Schwind saying that he "would be more credible if he didn't dye his gray hair".

During a heated dispute between Russia and Estonia in May 2007 over the removal of a Soviet-era war memorial from the centre of the Estonian capital Tallinn to a military cemetery, Schröder defended the Kremlin's reaction.

[127] Consequently, the Estonian government cancelled a planned visit by Schröder in his function as chairman of Nord Stream 1 AG, which promotes the petroleum pipeline from Russia to Germany.

[128] In August 2008, Schröder laid the blame for the 2008 South Ossetia war squarely on Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and "the West", hinting at American foreknowledge.

[133] His decision to celebrate his 70th birthday party with Putin in Saint Petersburg's Yusupov Palace in late April elicited further criticism from several members of Merkel's grand coalition, including human rights spokesperson Christoph Strässer.

[135] In August 2022, Schröder filed a suit with the Berlin administrative court against the Bundestag that sought to reinstate his privileges as former chancellor, appealing a decision to close his office and reallocate its remaining staff.

The portrait, which was completed by Immendorff's assistants, was revealed to the public in January 2007; the massive work has ironic character, showing the former chancellor in stern heroic pose, in the colors of the German flag, painted in the style of an icon, surrounded by little monkeys.