Franz Rolf Schröder

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Franz Rolf Schröder (8 September 1893 – 24 March 1979), usually called F. R. Schröder, was a German philologist who studied German and early Germanic literature and the religions of Germanic and Indo-European peoples. He was Professor and Chair of German Philology at the University of Würzburg and long-time editor of the Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift.

Schröder was born in Kiel, the son of linguist and editor Johannes Franz Heinrich Schröder and Minna Amanda Rolfs. After finishing school in 1911, he studied German philology at Kiel. He volunteered in the German Army at the start of World War I and earned his PhD at Kiel in 1916 under Hugo Gering; his thesis was on the Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar. He completed his habilitation in German and Nordic philology at Heidelberg University in 1920 with a thesis on the Nibelungen, and then lectured at Heidelberg.

In 1925 Schröder became Professor and Chair of German Philology at Würzburg. He later succeeded his father as editor of the Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift. His work focused on Germanic religion from a comparative perspective and its connections to Indo-European religion. He retired in 1959 and was made a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1965. Schröder died in Würzburg in 1979. His doctoral student included Norbert Wagner.