SCHRÖDER, SOPHIE (1781–1868), German actress, was born at Paderborn on the 23rd of February 1781, the daughter of an actor, Gottfried Bürger. She made her first appearance in opera at St Petersburg, in 1793. On Kotzebue’s recommendation she was engaged for the Vienna Court theatre in 1798, and here and in Munich and Hamburg she won great successes in tragic rôles like Marie Stuart, Phèdre, Merope, Lady Macbeth, and Isabella in The Bride of Messina, which gave her the reputation of being “the German Siddons.” She retired in 1840 and lived in Augsburg and Munich until her death on the 25th of February 1868. She had married, in 1795, an actor, Stollmers (properly Smets), from whom she separated in 1799. In 1804 she married the tenor Friedrich Schröder, and on his death in 1825, an actor, Kunst. Mme Schröder’s eldest daughter was the opera singer, Wilhelmine Devrient-Schröder (q.v.).
See Ph. Schmidt, Sophie Schröder (Vienna, 1870); also Das Lexikon der deutscher Bühnen-Angehörigen.