The early decades of his professional career were spent as a member of the East German historical establishment: the focus of much of his work was on the history of the labour movement.
In 1976 he relocated from Leipzig to East Berlin when he switched to working as a researcher at the Central/National Historical Institute at the German Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
[citation needed] Following the changes of 1989/1990, from 1992 till 1996 Schröder worked as an assistant at the Bonn-based Commission for the history of parliamentarianism and political parties [in Germany].
However, the project was well progressed, and three years later his widow, Renate Dreßler-Schröder and the historian Klaus Kinner were able to publish a version of it in 2013 as part of Schröder's literary legacy.
No attempt was made to gloss over the fragmentary nature of the work, but it nevertheless contained a large amount of new research involving hitherto overlooked sources.