[1][2] Wilhelm Heinz Schröder was born in Mellrichstadt, a small town in north-west Bavaria (Lower Franconia) and, for much of his life, close to the western side of the Inner German border separating East and West Germany.
On his father's side he came from a line of successful farmers who had been driven out of West Prussia by the ethnic cleansing of 1944/45.
From the early history of Social Democracy 1862-1878" (""Genossen, wir dürfen uns nicht von der Geduld hinreißen lassen.
[5] His focus on summary biographies of parliamentarians became an obvious theme with his Habilitation work which was originally published in truncated form in 1986 under the title "Biographical Handbook of Social Democratic Reichstag members and candidates ..." ("Biographisches Handbuch der Sozialdemokratische Reichstagsabgeordnete und Reichstagskandidaten 1898-1918.
[6] It includes: Wilhelm Heinz Schröder lives in Frechen, a suburb of Cologne on the western side of the city.