Alfred Ritscher

Alfred Ritscher (born May 23, 1879 in Lauterberg , † March 30, 1963 in Hamburg ) was a German captain and polar explorer .

Life

In 1897 Alfred Ritscher made his first voyage as a cabin boy on the Bremen full-service ship "Emilie". In 1903 he passed his tax man's exam and in 1907 acquired his captain's license. At the beginning of 1912 Ritscher received a position in the Reichsmarineamt .

In August 1912, Alfred Ritscher became the skipper of the motor cutter "Herzog Ernst", who was to spend the German Arctic Expedition from 1912 to 1913 under the direction of Herbert Schröder-Stranz from Tromsø through the northeast passage to Spitzbergen.

Schröder-Stranz had also carried out the expedition's air exploration and acquired the patent for it as a pilot. The Schröder-Stranz expedition failed when attempting to cross northeastern land in the Svalbard Archipelago because the crew's equipment was poor, the weather changes were incorrectly assessed and the start was far too late in the year. Ritscher managed to reach the Longyearbyen settlement in seven and a half days in a solo hike over 210 km . The search expedition, which he reported about the Schröder-Stranz expedition, saved six of the 14 members of the expedition who were still missing.

During the First World War , Ritscher set up two naval field pilot units to support the naval units in Flanders . After the war he worked as a self-employed businessman and in 1925 as a specialist in air navigation for Lufthansa .

Alfred Ritscher let his Jewish wife Susanne Ritscher b. Loewenthal divorced so as not to endanger the career he was aiming for in the War Ministry.

It was 1934 Councilor in the Supreme Command of the Navy . In 1938 he became expedition leader of the German Antarctic Expedition 1938/39 with the order to set up a base for the German whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean and to carry out the necessary aerial exploration and land acquisition of the Antarctic. During this expedition an area of about 600,000 km² was flown over with two flying boats of the type Dornier Do J II , which started from the steam catapult of the expedition ship Schwabenland . Around 11,000 detailed aerial photographs were taken with serial cameras .

Alfred Ritscher prepared another expedition with improved, lighter aircraft on skids, but this was not carried out because of the outbreak of World War II .

After the Second World War, Ritscher continued to work as chairman of the “Association for the Promotion of the Archives for Polar Research e. V. “, which was renamed the German Society for Polar Research eV in 1959 .

Awards

1959: Large Federal Cross of Merit
1959: Silver Kirchenpauer medal from the Geographical Society in Hamburg
The Ritscher summit and the Ritscher highlands in East Antarctica as well as the Ritscher Canyon in the Southern Ocean were named after him.

Works

Preliminary report on the German Antarctic Expedition 1938/39. - Ann. Hydrogr. u. Marit. Meteorol. 67, August supplement. In it: overview table of the working area of the German Antarctic Expedition 1938–39: Neuschwabenland: 1: 1,500,000 - 1st edition May / June 1939.
German Antarctic Expedition 1938/39 with the Lufthansa AGMS "Schwabenlan" aircraft base . - Volume 1, Scientific and Aviation Experiences, Koehler & Amelang; Leipzig 1942.
German Antarctic Expedition 1938/39 with the Lufthansa AGMS "Schwabenland" aircraft base . - Volume 2, Scientific Results. Geographical and Cartographic Institute "Mundus"; Hamburg 1954–58.

literature

Christine Reinke-Kunze: Departure into the white wilderness - The history of German polar research . Ernst Kabel Verlag Hamburg 1992. ISBN 3-8225-0192-1 .
Jani Pietsch: I owned a garden in Schöneiche near Berlin. The managed disappearance of Jewish neighbors and their difficult return , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 978-3-593-38027-8 .

Web links

Literature by and about Alfred Ritscher in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Ritscher, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German captain and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 23, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lauterberg
DATE OF DEATH	March 30, 1963
Place of death	Hamburg

[1] Jan Sternberg (May 4, 2006) In Search of a Lost Generation. taz (accessed March 9, 2008)

[2] Karl-Heinz Tiedemann: 55 years of the "German Archive for Polar Research", 50 years of the "Polar Research" magazine. Alfred Wegener Institute, publications of the Working Group on the History of Polar Research 1981 (PDF; 247 kB)

[3] Dietrich Möller: In memoriam Ilse Ritscher Alfred-Wegener-Institut, publications of the working group History of Polar Research, Polarforschung 65 (3), 145, 1995 (published 1998) (PDF; 269 kB)

[4] (no author details) In brief: North polar region. Alfred Wegener Institute, publications of the working group History of Polar Research 1959 (PDF; 746 kB)