Friedrich Ritter (local history researcher)

Friedrich Nathanael Julius Ritter (born August 13, 1856 in Leer ; † April 8, 1944 in Emden ) was a German homeland researcher and high school professor .

Life

Friedrich Ritter was born on August 14, 1856 as the son of a high school teacher in the East Frisian town of Leer, where he grew up. After his schooling he studied at the University of Göttingen and received his doctorate at this for Dr. phil. Subsequently, at the age of 26, after receiving his teaching qualification in 1881 and working in Hildesheim for about a year , he came to Emden, where he spent the next 62 years until his death. The later senior teacher taught here at the Wilhelmsgymnasium Emden until his retirement in 1921. Even after his retirement, Ritter, who remained a bachelor until the end of his life, made a contribution to local research and the history of the city of Emden. The main focus of his research was on the heroic epoch of the city in the 16th and 17th centuries. From this time he knew every resident and every house, since in the 1880s he systematically looked through the Emden contract protocols from the Royal Prussian State Archives Aurich , the Emden council and treasury registration from the city archive and the church council protocols and books of the parishes and in countless numbers Had taken notes. He researched the history of the city of Emden into old age.

His first writings date from the early 1880s and go roughly into the 1930s. In addition to school, Ritter had his second center of life in the Society for Fine Arts and Patriotic Antiquities in Emden , where he was the leading figure from around 1890 to 1930. However, he never aspired to chair the company because social behavior was not one of his strengths. In the field of art , the simple short name of the company, he appeared as editor of the yearbooks and incorporated his own knowledge into many comments on essays. With the so-called Upstalsboom-Blätter , Ritter created a second organ in addition to the Society's yearbooks in 1910. During his life, Ritter never presented a comprehensive account or even wrote a book; instead, however, he had made countless contributions to the yearbooks or contributions in other formats such as the Algemeen Nederlandsch familieblad , in Alt-Emden. Home pages from East Friesland or the Bremen Yearbook .

Ritter was considered a typical positivist of the 19th century who had a penchant for detail in his research. Later allegations against him stated that he had therefore "collected everything at random", which can no longer be verified today due to severe losses in the company's collections. Because of his knowledge, it was quite understandable for Ritter that all inquiries about the history of Emden were answered by him. The municipal committees of Emden had not employed a city archivist and thus let the private man Ritter, who always had free access to the city archive, rule in it. So he was the only one who knew about its holdings and thus got the feeling that he was called to do this work alone. Thanks to Ritter , the art , which had actually been founded as a museum association in 1820, soon gained the undisputed reputation of being the home of East Frisian historical research. Because Ritter and some colleagues equated the city of Emden with all of East Frisia, discontent soon arose.

As early as 1886 the city of Emden applied - presumably with the help of Ritter - to move the almost forgotten Royal Prussian State Archives Aurich to Emden. However, this was subsequently not approved; Four years later, however, a further building was built in addition to the existing archive, in which the first archivist was employed from 1897. Thus a second center of East Frisian history emerged, to which Ritter reacted with jealousy. He also showed this by the fact that he was so committed to Emden that he only published there. When the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen was founded in 1910 and the arts were a founding member of this commission, Ritter sat on its committee for them. He hardly appeared there, so that the commission did not even think about him after his death. As Ritters got older, dealing with him is said to have become more and more difficult. In 1926 his 70th birthday was generally celebrated, but he was not told that he would now have to make room for others.

With the reorganization of the art collections, which Jan Fastenau had been commissioned to do at the end of the 1920s , a crisis arose as he soon became at odds with Ritter. After the seizure of power of the Nazis in 1933 an attempt was made knight with the 1886 born in Emden publisher and historian Louis Hahn to pacify. As a half-Jew , Ritter was forced to resign as vice chairman of the arts ; at the same time the use of the city archive was withdrawn from him. In vain tried Ritter, who was unsympathetic to the National Socialists from the start, to protest at Anton Kappelhoff . Kappelhoff still kept the Tuesday sessions of art open, but could not prevent Ritter being prevented from printing his last essay, in which he wanted to prove Otto Friedrich von Wicht as the engraver of traditional costumes based on the Manninga book, in the Art Yearbook .

On April 8, 1944, Ritter died in Emden at the age of 87 and was buried at the side of Franziska Ritter (1858–1934) at the Emden Bolardusfriedhof . He left an extensive legacy, which is considered to be a "non-exploitable treasure trove of East Frisian history". Out of annoyance about the treatment by the Emden city government and the National Socialists, he had not bequeathed his estate to the city, but left it to the Reformed Church . Through this, the scientific legacy of Ritter, which was completely mixed up during the Second World War , came to the Aurich State Archives in 1950. Up until his death, Ritter was friends with the journalist, editor-in-chief and local researcher Hermann Abels , which is also evident from his estate.

literature

• Walter Deeters: RITTER, Friedrich Nathanael Julius . In: Volume I of the Biographical Lexicon for Ostfriesland (published on behalf of the Ostfriesische Landschaft by Martin Tielke). East Frisian landscape: Aurich 1993. ISBN 3-925365-75-3 . Pp. 292-295
• Dietrich Soltau: Prof. Dr. Friedrich Ritter. His 70th birthday in the art of Emden . In: Heim und Herd . Supplement to the Ostfriesischer Kurier . Soltau-Verlag: Norden 1926. No. 213
• Ufke Cremer: Friedrich Ritter . In: Ostfreesland. A calendar for everyone . Soltau-Verlag: Norden 1948. P. 90f

Web links

• Friedrich Ritter on the official website of the East Frisian Landscape

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} ARTWORK OF THE MONTH JULY 2006 (1) - portrait photography , accessed on August 22, 2019
2. ^ Grave of Friedrich Ritter on grabsteine-ostfriesland.de, accessed on 23 August 2019
3. ↑ ^{a b} Ritter's estate in the Lower Saxony and Bremen archive information system , accessed on 23 August 2019