Background
Ludwig von Schröder was born in Hintzenkamp near Ückermünde on July 17, 1854, the son of an estate owner.
Ludwig von Schröder was born in Hintzenkamp near Ückermünde on July 17, 1854, the son of an estate owner.
Schröder joined the navy in 1871, lectured at the Navy School, and later was attached to the Supreme Command of the Navy.
In 1900 he was appointed director of the Navy School in Kiel and thereafter department chief of the Admiralty Staff. In 1903 Captain Schröder com-manded the Cruiser Squadron in the West Indies, and two years later as rear admiral was inspector of naval artillery. Schröder was chief of the Second Squadron of the High Sea Fleet in 1907 in the grade of vice admiral, and in 1910/1911 as admiral headed the Baltic Sea naval station at Kiel. He retired from active service in 1912 and was ennobled.
The gruff, aggressive Schröder was reactivated at the end of August 1914 as head of a Naval Division assembled in Kiel for service in Flanders under the command of General Hans von Beseler. The naval infantry came under fire at Overdevaert and Aerschot on September 9 from troops commanded by King Albert of Belgium; after repulsing this attack, Schroder's forces advanced on Antwerp, which fell on October 11. In November the division fought at the North Sea coast along the Yser River. By then it had been expanded to a Navy Corps and entrusted with defense of the Flanders coast on the right wing of the Fourth Army. Schröder improved existing harbor facilities at Brugge, Ostend, and Zeebrugge for use by German submarines and destroyers; one-third of all Allied shipping destroyed resulted from U-boats stationed in Flanders. In July 1917, the Navy Corps defended the triangle Brugge-Zeebrugge-Ostend against British attacks during the bloody battle of Ypres. Schroder's Corps consisted of three divisions (60-70,000 men) posted along the sixty-kilometer coastline.
At the start of the great German Michael offensive in France in 1918, British forces under Commodore Roger Keyes attempted on March 22/23 to block the harbor channels at Ostend and Zeebrugge, but they were repulsed and denied this goal by Schroder's men. At the height of the German offen-sive, naval long-range guns bombarded Paris.
However, as the German assault spent itself by June, Allied counteroffensives in September and October drove the Navy Corps as well as the Fourth Army to the Lys River, and beyond. On November 8 Wilhelm II appointed Schröder chief of the Kiel naval station and ordered his Flanders Navy Corps to suppress the rebellion on the High Sea Fleet. Schröder was more than willing to move against the rebellious units, but Chancellor Prince Max von Baden quickly vetoed such a mission as being politically "suicidal." Thus ended the military career of the popularly hailed Lion of Flanders. After the war, Schröder headed the National Union of German Officers. He died in Berlin on July 23, 1933.