Interviews with German anthropologists - Video Portal for the History of German Anthropology post 1945

Ekkehard Schröder was born in Potsdam in 1944. His family eventually moved to the South German region of Swabia, where he finished school in 1964.

The same year Schröder took up his studies at the university in Kiel. He chose Psychology as his major subject but also attended lectures on Philosophy and Anthropology. In Anthropology Katesa Schlosser was among his teachers. Moreover, Schröder was interested in Theater Studies, which he briefly studied in Munich and Saarbrücken.

After his return to Kiel Schröder not only continued to study Psychology, Physical Anthropology and Philosophy but also took up medical studies. Due to a growing interest in an ethnosociological perspective, Schröder moved to Heidelberg in 1970, where he continued his studies at the Institute of Sociology and Ethnology. Furthermore, he became member of the ethno-medical association AGEM (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ethnomedizin).

In 1973 Schröder completed his medical exams and eventually worked as a medical assistant at the Tropical Medicine Clinic in Heidelberg. Moreover, he organized ethno-medical conferences and occasionally worked as a country doctor. Schröder simultaneously continued his studies at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies in Mainz between 1975 and 1979. Besides visiting lectures by E.W. Müller and Alfons Dauer, he also attended courses on Philosophy and Physical Anthropology.

In 1978 Schröder co-founded of the ethno-medical journal Curare and was its editor-in-chief until 1993 and from 2001 onward. Throughout the following years, Schröder also was not only responsible for a number of administrative tasks for Curare and AGEM but kept organizing further ethno-medical conferences. Between 1975 and 1981 he was deputy chairman of AGEM and between 1986 and 1993 he was its head chairman.

Since the late 1970s Schröder also participated in further medical education programs in order to become a specialist physician for neurology, psychotherapy and psychosomatics. He eventually worked in several fields of profession (e.g., in rehabilitation programs) and continuously published various articles on ethno-medical topics.

Since 1993 Schröder works as a psychotherapist in Potsdam.