Alfred Theodor Ritter

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Alfred Theodor Ritter (born April 1, 1953 in Stuttgart ) is a German entrepreneur . Together with his sister Marli Hoppe-Ritter, he is the owner of the confectionery manufacturer Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG (known for the chocolate brand Ritter Sport ). He is also co-founder, chairman of the supervisory board and shareholder of the Ritter Group , which manufactures vacuum tube collectors and ecological heating systems, and has received several awards for his commitment to renewable energy .

Life

Alfred Theodor Ritter is a grandson of the company's founder Alfred Eugen Ritter and the son of Alfred Otto Ritter († 1974) and his wife Martha.

First, for the sake of his father, he began to study economics for four semesters from 1972 at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . Then he changed the subject and instead studied psychology with additional training in bioenergetic analysis . When the father died in 1974, the son initially did not want to take over the family business. In 1978, however, he took over the chairmanship of the advisory board of the chocolate company, which at that time was re-established as a strategic management body in addition to the operational management and was led alternately by the family members. After completing his psychology degree in 1981, Alfred T. Ritter worked as a self-employed psychotherapist in Heidelberg from 1982 to 1986 .

In the mid-1980s, however, Alfred T. Ritter gave up his practice as a psychologist. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster , due to which the hazelnut harvest of the Turkish plantations, which was important for the Ritter chocolate company , was largely lost due to radiation exposure, prompted him to enter the renewable energies sector . When he was looking for a heating system without coal and oil for his private house and could not find a satisfactory solution on the market, he filled the niche in the market himself and in 1988 co-founded the Paradigma group of companies for solar, wood pellet and gas heating systems in Pforzheim (today's headquarters: Karlsbad -Langensteinbach near Karlsruhe). Its subsidiary, Ritter Solar GmbH & Co. KG in Dettenhausen near Tübingen, founded in 2000, is now the largest German manufacturer of vacuum tube collectors . Alfred T. Ritter also supported the solar energy pioneer Georg Salvamoser in founding the solar factory in 1996 , in which he still holds shares and of which he was chairman of the supervisory board until October 5, 2010.

He also offers advice on sustainable investments and was involved in the film company focus film , which produces environmental documentaries, among other things. Together with his sister, he is the developer of a solar house development for the Freiburg solar architect Rolf Disch and the owner of the Ritter industrial park in Karlsbad-Langensteinbach with twelve passive houses .

On the initiative of Alfred T. Ritter and his sister, who had sympathy for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas , who overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 , Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG has been supporting the farming cooperative Cacaonica in the Waslala district since 1990 / Nicaragua , which grows organic cocoa ( EU certified since 2000 ).

It was not until December 2005 that Alfred T. Ritter took over the chairmanship of the father's confectionery company after the previous operational manager had to leave the company in a conflict with the owners about the future strategy. On the initiative of Alfred T. Ritter, in 2008 the employees working in the lowest wage groups were grouped into slightly higher wages. On the other hand, the company outsourced the packaging to a subcontractor that pays lower wages than the wage agreement for the confectionery industry.

On January 1, 2015, Alfred T. Ritter handed over the chairmanship of the management of Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG to Andreas Ronken and instead took over the chairmanship of the advisory board from his sister Marli Hoppe-Ritter .

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Quadratic. Practically. Green. , greenpeace magazine, 4.03
  2. ↑ The group is now combined under the umbrella of the Holding Ritter Energie- und Umwelttechnik GmbH & Co. KG , whose shareholders are Alfred T. Ritter (90% stake) and his sister (10%).
  3. ↑ A brief, ten-minute portrait of Alfred T. Ritter under the title Der Grüne Ritter by Gabriele Ammermann (the director and journalist also worked for WWF at times) from 1998 was produced by focus film for Arte . The focus film GmbH is now called fechnerMEDIA GmbH, and Carl-A has been the managing partner since 1988 . Fechner .
  4. ^ Adios, comfort , Badische Zeitung , November 8, 2008
  5. ↑ It was not until April 2008, when demand for organic food had been increasing for years, that the Alfred Ritter company has been selling organic chocolate in Germany, which is also made from cocoa from this cooperative. Also, it has only been since 2008 that Ritter has been paying the cooperative's farmers a price that is around a third higher (source: Ritter Sport does not only want to look at the return , Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , January 1, 2009)
  6. ↑ We have abolished the lower wage groups , Der Spiegel, November 25, 2008
  7. ↑ Engagement in portrait: Ritter Sport: Chocolate for a better world ( Memento from April 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ mik / dpa: Alfred Ritter gives leadership of Ritter Sport. In: Spiegel Online . November 7, 2014, accessed April 13, 2020 .
  9. ↑ German Solar Prizes 2003. In: www.eurosolar.de/de. Eurosolar, 2003, archived from the original on August 24, 2007 ; Retrieved August 24, 2007 .
  10. ↑ Honorary Senators of the University of Freiburg , accessed on July 3, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Ritter, Alfred Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ritter, Alfred T.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart