Karl Röder was born in Ludwigshafen-Mundenheim on 5 May 1908 and worked as a bricklayer. In 1934 he married Anna Hedwig Kaldschmidt from Mutterstadt; their daughter Gerda was born in 1938. Röder had been a member of the Mutterstadt Workers’ Singing Association since 1924, until it was banned during Nazi “coordination” in 1933. His SPD membership also made him a target. On 17 March 1933 he was taken into “protective custody” and imprisoned in the early Neustadt concentration camp, where prisoners were brutally abused. On 12 April 1933 he and other Mutterstadt detainees, including Fritz Schalk and Jakob Weber, were transferred to Frankenthal prison and released on 25 April. Back in Mutterstadt, he joined the illegal socialist resistance and helped distribute Der Kleine Vorwärts. As a private in a pioneer battalion, he was killed near Shejug, Russia, on 14 July 1943.
