Gerhard A. Ritter

Gerhard Albert Ritter (born March 29, 1929 in Berlin ; † June 20, 2015 there ) was a German historian and political scientist .

Ritter held chairs for political science at the Free University of Berlin (1962–1964), for modern history at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster (1964–1974) and for modern and contemporary history at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (1974–1974) 1994). Ritter is considered to be one of the most important pioneers of critical social history in the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945. His work is considered innovative because of this early turn to social history, the novel combination of historical and political science and the systematic historical comparison.

Life

Origin and youth

Gerhard A. Ritter came from a humble background. His two grandmothers came to Berlin as maids from Silesia and Pomerania. One of the two grandfathers was a beer driver, the other a shoemaker. Ritter's parents grew up in the Berlin working-class district of Moabit . His father was a publisher and bookseller and built up a small theater company. His mother worked as a tailor. The journalist, theater and film critic Heinz Ritter was his older brother. The brothers grew up in bourgeois Berlin-Dahlem . The family was oriented towards social democracy. The historian Friedrich Meinecke lived in the immediate vicinity . As a young student, Ritter read scientific literature to the visually impaired Meinecke. He attended the Arndt-Gymnasium Dahlem and the school in Kleinmachnow from 1935 to 1943. As a commercial apprentice he worked from 1944 to 1945 in the head office of Feldmühle AG , a company in the paper and pulp industry. He broke off his apprenticeship and again attended the Arndt-Gymnasium from 1945 to 1947. Ritter was the first in the family to embark on a university career. There were no family ties to the Freiburg historian Gerhard Ritter .

academic career

From 1947 he studied history, political science, philosophy and German at the University of Tübingen and the Free University of Berlin . Ritter was particularly influenced by Hans Herzfeld . Wilhelm Berges shaped him in medieval history and Walter Schlesinger was important for the history of the country but also for the Middle Ages . Also have Ernst Fraenkel as a specialist in issues of labor and social law and Meinecke students and Jewish emigrant Hans Rosenberg Knights greatly affected. Ritter soon developed a close personal friendship with Rosenberg. The historian Rudolf Stadelmann left a lasting impression on him in Tübingen . He finished his studies in 1952. At Herzfeld he received his doctorate in 1952 at the age of 23 in Berlin. Ritter had presented a study on the labor movement in the first decade of the Wilhelmine Empire . On this topic Ritter was suggested in a seminar by Rudolf Stadelmann in Tübingen. From 1952 to 1954 he had a postdoctoral research stay at St Antony's College in Oxford, mediated by Hans Herzfeld . During this time he worked on his habilitation thesis on the English Labor Party and foreign policy between 1900 and 1919. The work remained unpublished. He cherished the English politics and culture that Ritter got to know during this time for a lifetime. At the same time, this encouraged his tendency towards international comparison in his research work. After completing his studies, from October 1954 to 1961 he was a research assistant at the Herzfeld chair at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute at the Free University of Berlin. At the same time, he was a lecturer at the German University of Politics in Berlin from 1956 and led events on the English system of government. In 1959 he earned a Bachelor of Literature, a graduate degree, from Oxford University with a study of the British labor movement and its policy towards Russia from 1917 to 1925 .

Ritter completed his habilitation at Herzfeld in 1961 in Modern History and Political Science on The British Labor Movement from the Establishment of the Labor Representation Committee (1900) to the Russian March Revolution (1917) . From 1962 at the age of 33, Ritter taught at the Free University of Berlin at the Otto Suhr Institute as a professor of political science. Three years later he took over a professorship for modern and contemporary history at the University of Münster . There he taught mainly about the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1968, Ritter received an appointment to succeed Fraenkel at the Free University of Berlin. Ritter refused the appeal. From 1974 until his retirement in 1994 he held the chair for modern and contemporary history at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . He turned down several other offers, including the position of director of the German Historical Institute in London . As an academic teacher, he supervised 17 dissertations in Berlin and Münster and 36 dissertations in Munich. Ritter's academic students included Wilhelm Bleek , Manfred Botzenhart , Rüdiger vom Bruch , Karin Hausen , Hartmut Kaelble , Jürgen Kocka , Peter Longerich , Karl Heinz Metz , Merith Niehuss , Johannes Paulmann , Hans-Jürgen Puhle , Margit Szöllösi-Janze , Klaus Tenfelde and Jürgen Zarusky . Twelve habilitation theses were created under Ritter. Of his students who did their doctorate or habilitation with him, 21 are professors at a German or foreign university. However, no "knight school" developed in the sense of a group of students with a common research area.

Ritter was married from 1955. The marriage resulted in two sons. After his retirement, he first lived in Allmannshausen on Lake Starnberg and moved back to Berlin in December 2001. Ritter lost his wife in 2013. He remained scientifically active into old age and attended the historians' days . At the age of 86, Ritter died on June 20, 2015 in Berlin after suffering from long-term cancer. He was buried in the Dahlem cemetery.

On June 20, 2016, a conference and commemoration was held in Munich under the title "Gerhard A. Ritter - Schoolchildren, colleagues, companions and friends remembering his personality". In October 2016, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation organized a symposium in Berlin in memory of Gerhard A. Ritter.

plant

In the more than five decades of his work, Ritter published dozens of books and well over a hundred scientific articles. In the professional world, Ritter is considered a master of scientific short prose. In an essay published after his death in 2016, Ritter made it clear that he received crucial intellectual impulses for his scientific thinking from Jewish historians who had to flee Germany because of National Socialism. In addition to Hans Rosenberg and Ernst Fraenkel, Ritter was in close professional exchange with the historian Dietrich Gerhard , the Germanist Egon Schwarz and the political scientist and Eastern Europe expert Richard Löwenthal .

Ritter had four major areas of focus. Building on his dissertation, he dealt with the history of the German workers and workers movement. He also devoted himself early to parliamentarianism and electoral research in the 19th and 20th centuries and, from a comparative perspective, also to British parliamentarism. As a scientist, the development of the modern welfare state and, most recently, German reunification was also a personal concern of his. Other subject areas such as historiography or the history of science supplemented his four major subject areas. Social history formed the center of his diverse interests and topics. His constitutional, electoral, political and scientific history work also remained oriented towards social history. Knight has returned in retrospect his interest in social history on perceptions of his own youth, as when he remarked about the living conditions of his parents, about maids and Inste : "stories of my grandmothers about their time as a maid in Berlin or experiences like the Visit to the village in Pomerania, where my father was born premaritally and where, as in his youth, the farm workers and Indians still lived in fear of the landlord. That preoccupied me a lot. ”Later he was influenced by the historical writings of the Catholic Socialists around the turn of the century and the methods of English and American social scientists.

Ritter contributed significantly to the rise of social history through his research and publications, his teaching and the training of a large number of students. However, Ritter did not present an overall theoretical concept for the construction of social history. Ritter did not take part in the discussions about the concept, the delimitation and the functions of social history.

History of the German workers and workers movement

His first field of research was the history of the German workforce and labor movement. His dissertation on the labor movement in Wilhelmine Germany was a pioneering achievement, because the history of the labor movement had been neglected in the Federal Republic up to that point. Ritter argued not only in terms of party and organizational history, but above all in terms of social history. His work also took into account the social and cultural milieu of the labor movement. Ritter understood the labor movement “as an emancipation and cultural movement”. The research stay at St Antony's College in Oxford expanded his research to include a comparative view of the British labor movement. Ritter conceived in the early 1970s with the historical work area of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation , the series history of the workers and the labor movement in Germany since the end of the 18th century . According to Dieter Dowe , the project was under the impression of the competitive situation with the Marxist - Leninist GDR historiography and its 1966 history of the German labor movement . Dowe praised the series as a "major publishing feat," though it is still ongoing. Ritter was editor of this major social-historical project until the end of his life. In this series he published together with Klaus Tenfelde the basic work Arbeiter im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1871-1914 .

Research on parliamentarism and election in the 19th and 20th centuries

Ritter's second field of work was parliamentarianism and electoral research in the 19th and 20th centuries, comparing British parliamentarism. In 1962 he published his work German and British Parliamentarism. A constitutional comparison . In a British-German parliamentary and party comparison, Ritter identified the structural deficits on the German side. Like many other contemporary historians of his generation, Ritter was particularly interested in the failure of the first German democracy in 1933. Ritter's research on British parliamentarism dates back to the early modern period of the 16th and 17th centuries. He investigated the conflict between the king and parliament. His first article in the historical journal also dealt with a subject of the early modern English constitution. In the process, Ritter was particularly influenced by the fundamental work of the historian George L. Mosse, who emigrated from Germany, and the Tudor expert Geoffrey Elton . Ritter suggested the manual on the history of German parliamentarism . The long-term project explores parliamentarianism in Germany from the early 19th century to the present. In 1985 Ritter published a brief work on the history of German political parties from 1830 to 1914. Ritter was co-editor of the series of statistical workbooks on recent German history . His election and social history “workbooks” became an indispensable aid for social and political science courses in the 1970s and 1980s. After 1990, his research on the history of parliamentarism and parties concentrated on the newly re-established new federal states.

He continued Ritter's research focus on other topics that arose from his central questions. Ritter led a large research project on inflation in Germany after the First World War with Gerald D. Feldman , Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich and Peter-Christian Witt . In doing so, he dealt with the social consequences of inflation and also took into account the international context and comparison. Inflation was one of the greatest challenges for the legitimacy and integrative power of the Weimar Republic. Ritter operated social history with it and pursued his tendency towards international comparison in historical studies.

Development of the modern welfare state

In his third field of work he dealt with the development of the modern welfare state . A particularly fruitful exchange arose with the Jewish historian Ernest Peter Hennock, who was expelled from National Socialist Germany . In his research, Ritter compared the welfare state of Germany with England. The work was translated into English and Korean in 1986. His account of the emergence and development of the welfare state in international comparison, first published in 1989, is considered a standard work and was published in its third edition in 2010. With this study he presented the first international history of the welfare state. The work has been translated into Spanish, Japanese and Italian. In 1989 he presented in German and in 1991 in English a detailed account of the development of social history in the Federal Republic. In his study published in 1998, Ritter dealt with the history of the German welfare state. With this study, Ritter intended to make a contribution to the current discussion about its reform by working out how the German welfare state was shaped by its history. Ritter was a member of the scientific advisory board that has accompanied the development of the history of social policy in Germany since 1945 , which was published in eleven volumes from 2001 to 2008 by the Federal Ministry for Labor and Social Affairs and the Federal Archives ; he himself was responsible for the eleventh volume in the series from 1989–1994. Federal Republic of Germany. Social policy under the sign of unification .

Political and social consequences of German unity

In his fourth area of ​​work, Ritter continued his research on the welfare state and dealt with the discussion about the crisis of the welfare state in a united Germany. His remarks Über Deutschland , published in 1998, he dedicated to the "demonstrators in Leipzig and other cities in the GDR who brought a dictatorship to collapse". With the book he is pursuing the goal of "determining the place of the three German states - the old Federal Republic, the GDR and the Federal Republic after unification - in German history". Ritter wants to encourage further engagement with Germany's past and present. He opposes the "widespread currents of self-indulgence and pessimism" and wants to show that not only aggressive nationalism and ethnic thinking are hallmarks of the German past, but also the rule of law, federalism, the idea of ​​social solidarity and parliamentarism. His presentation, published in 2006, The Price of German Unity. The reunification and the crisis of the welfare state dealt with the economic and social policy in the period from the end of 1989 to the federal election of October 1994. The representation is based on newly developed archive material from the Federal Chancellery , the Federal Ministry of Finance and above all from the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. In addition, Ritter conducted 14 interviews with socio-political actors in the unification process such as Norbert Blüm and Regine Hildebrandt . With his work, Ritter has for the first time completely reconstructed the path to monetary, economic and social union. The rapid increase in wages in the East was a mistake for Ritter, "which contributed significantly to the lack of competitiveness and thus to the collapse of large parts of East German industry". According to Ritter, however, “there was no real opportunity for major reforms” in the unification process. The socio-political safeguarding of German unity through the transfer of the West German social constitution to the East German states was "necessary and organizationally a masterpiece" for Ritter, especially since numerous institutions had to be created in the new federal states in order to manage the transition from a planned economy to a market economy. At the same time, the restructuring of the West German welfare state that had begun in the 1980s and which would have been necessary in view of demographic change, the cost explosion in the health care system and globalization, came to a standstill. For Ritter, the crisis in the welfare state since the early 1990s is therefore also a consequence of reunification. In his final consideration, Ritter comes to the conclusion that the German welfare state, despite all the political upheavals, has shown a very large degree of continuity since its formation in the 1880s. The work was recognized as a "masterpiece" in the professional world. Since its publication in 2006, Ritter's work has been considered one of the most important contributions to German unity. Based on this work, he presented a compact presentation of German unification in 2009. In this little story of German unification he understood "the East Germans as the bearers of the peaceful revolution leading to unity", which he understood as "one of the great moments of German history, unfortunately, not exactly rich in such."

In 2013, Ritter published a book about Hans-Dietrich Genscher's role in reunification. In doing so, Ritter was able to evaluate the 271 volumes of files from the holdings of the Political Archive of the Foreign Office, which have been publicly accessible since 2009, for further research. Ritter would like to revise a perspective on reunification in 1989/90 that is too focused on Helmut Kohl and the Federal Chancellery. With the book, Ritter also attempted to paint a more nuanced picture of the foreign policy of German unification in 1989/90. Ritter also contradicted claims of a rivalry between Kohl and Genscher or between the Chancellery and the Foreign Office. According to Ritter, Genscher and the Foreign Office played "an indispensable, decisive role for the success of politics". According to his conclusion, Kohl and Genscher "worked together in a" tandem "that did not always function properly to secure the process of German unification [...] in terms of foreign policy."

Historiography or history of science

Ritter was interested in the history of science. He wrote a detailed appraisal of his academic teacher Hans Herzfeld. Ritter was chairman of the scientific advisory board of the project "History of Large Research Institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany". In 1992 he published his first overview of “ Large-scale research in Germany”. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Friends and Supporters of the LeoBaeck Institute Frankfurt . On the occasion of the 50th anniversary, Ritter wrote an article about the institute.

In 2006, Ritter presented an edition of the sources on Friedrich Meinecke's relationship with his emigrated students ( Friedrich Meinecke. Academic teacher and emigrated students. Letters and records, 1910–1977 ). The source edition was published in 2010 in English translation. On the occasion of Friedrich Meinecke's 150th birthday in 2012, Ritter and Gisela Bock published a collection with “New letters and documents” on the life and work of the scholar from 1878 to 1953. The volume includes almost 400 Meinecke's letters and over 120 meaningful documents. Meinecke's more than forty years of activity as editor of the historical magazine is a focus in the second section of the letter and document collection. A few years earlier, Ritter had already dealt with Meinecke's ousting as editor of the historical journal by the National Socialists in 1935 and also with the emigrated Meinecke students Hajo Holborn , Felix Gilbert , Dietrich Gerhard and Hans Rosenberg.

Activity as a science organizer

In addition to his research and publication activities, Ritter was also active in the scientific organization. From 1976 to 1980 he was chairman of the Association of German Historians . In 1991/92 Ritter was the planning officer and chairman of the structure and appointment committee for the reorganization of history and ethnology at the Humboldt University in Berlin . In the structural plan implemented by Ritter, 15 chairs or professorships and three professorships in ethnology and two in prehistory and early history were created in the Institute for History. With the reorganization of historical studies, one of the most important historical institutes in the Federal Republic of Germany was established in Berlin in just a few years. He gave a detailed account of his work as a science organizer at the HU Berlin to the scientific public. Ritter also helped set up the Historisches Kolleg in Munich, founded in 1980, and the German Historical Institutes in London and Washington . Ritter cultivated contacts with Israeli historians from an early age and thereby gave important impulses for a new scientific beginning between the two states.

Honors and memberships

Ritter has received numerous scientific honors and memberships for his research. Since 1963 he was a member of the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties , since May 1968 a full member and since 1977 a corresponding member of the Historical Commission for Westphalia . Since 1971 he has been a member of the historical commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . He was also a full member of the Bavarian Academy from 1980 to 2002 and a corresponding member since moving to Berlin.

In 1983 he was made an Honorary Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, for his services to liaison and research . In 1987/88 he was a research fellow at the Historical College in Munich . Ritter was a member of the extended editorial board and the scientific advisory board of the historical journal (1985-2009), the Tel Aviv yearbook for German history and the journal for foreign and international labor and social law .

Ritter was visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis in 1965, at Oxford University (European Studies Center of St Antony's College) in 1965/66 and 1972/73, at the University of California, Berkeley 1971/72, at Tel Aviv University 1973 and in the 1997/98 winter semester he was Otto von Freising visiting professor at the Catholic University of Eichstätt .

In 1994, after Hans Rosenberg (1977), Ritter was the first historian to receive an honorary doctorate from the Bielefeld Faculty of History. Ritter's commitment to the restructuring of the institutes for history and ethnology was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1999 by the Humboldt University in Berlin . Ritter was a member, deputy chairman (1992–1997) and honorary member of the scientific advisory board of the Institute for Contemporary History .

In September 2007, Ritter received the German Historian's Prize , the Prize of the Historisches Kolleg , for his work, The Prize of German Unity , published in 2006 . The award, endowed with 30,000 euros, honors a work that breaks new scientific ground and works beyond the boundaries of disciplines.

In 2008 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany . The Free State of Bavaria honored him with the Bavarian Order of Merit .

Fonts (selection)

A list of publications appeared in: Jürgen Kocka (Hrsg.): From the workers' movement to the modern welfare state. Festschrift for Gerhard A. Ritter on his 65th birthday. Saur, Munich et al. 1994, ISBN 3-598-11201-7 , pp. 849-858.

Source edition

• Friedrich Meinecke. Academic teacher and emigrated student. Letters and notes 1910–1977 (= Biographical Sources for Contemporary History. Vol. 23). Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-57977-0 .

Monographs

• Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the Foreign Office and the German Association. Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-64495-5 .
• The welfare state. Origin and development in an international comparison. 3rd, expanded edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-59817-9 .
• The price of German unity. The reunification and the crisis of the welfare state. 2nd, expanded edition. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56860-2 .
• We are the people! We are one people! History of German Unification. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59208-9 .
• with Klaus Tenfelde : Workers in the German Empire 1871 to 1914 (= history of the workers and the workers' movement in Germany since the end of the 18th century. Vol. 3). Dietz, Bonn 1992, ISBN 3-8012-0168-6 .
• The social democracy in the German Empire from a social historical perspective (= writings of the historical college. Lectures. Vol. 22). Historisches Kolleg Foundation, Munich 1989 ( digitized version ).
• with Klaus Tenfelde : Arbeiter im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1871–1914 (= history of the workers and labor movement in Germany since the end of the 18th century. Vol. 5). Dietz, Bonn 1992, ISBN 3-8012-0168-6 .
• The labor movement in the Wilhelmine Reich. The Social Democratic Party and the Free Trade Unions 1890–1900 (= Studies on European History from the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Free University of Berlin. Vol. 3). 2nd revised edition. Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1963 (partly also: Berlin, Free University, dissertation, 1952).

Editorships

• The rise of the German labor movement. Social democracy and free trade unions in the party system and social milieu of the empire (= writings of the historical college. Colloquia. Vol. 18). With the assistance of Elisabeth Müller-Luckner. Oldenbourg, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55641-X ( digitized version ).
• with Karl Otmar von Aretin : Historicism and modern history. Europe between revolution and restoration 1797–1815. Third German-Soviet historians meeting in the Federal Republic of Germany, Munich 13. – 18. March 1978 (= publications of the Institute for European History, Mainz. Vol. 21). Steiner, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-515-04254-7 .

literature

• Volker Ullrich : German working life. On the death of the great social historian Gerhard A. Ritter. In: Die Zeit , No. 26, June 25, 2015, p. 20 ( online ).
• Lorenz Jäger: Contemporary Stories. On the death of the historian Gerhard A. Ritter. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 22, 2015, No. 141, p. 15.
• Jürgen Kocka, Hans-Jürgen Puhle, Klaus Tenfelde (eds.): From the labor movement to the modern welfare state. Festschrift for Gerhard A. Ritter on his 65th birthday. Saur, Munich et al. 1994, ISBN 3-598-11201-7 .
• Rüdiger Hohls , Konrad H. Jarausch (Ed.): Missed questions. German historians in the shadow of National Socialism. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart et al. 2000, ISBN 3-421-05341-3 , pp. 118-143 and 467 (interview online ).
• Andreas Helle, Söhnke Schreyer, Marcus Gräser : Disciplinary history and history of democracy. On the development of political and historical science in Germany after 1945. A conversation with Gerhard A. Ritter. In: Marcus Gräser (Ed.): State, Nation, Democracy. Traditions and Perspectives of Modern Societies. Festschrift for Hans-Jürgen Puhle. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-36259-5 , pp. 270-278.
• Klaus Hildebrand : laudation for Gerhard A. Ritter. In: Historical magazine . Vol. 286 (2008), H. 2, pp. 281-288, DOI: 10.1524 / hzhz.2008.0012 .
• Jürgen Kocka: Careful innovator. Gerhard A. Ritter and social history in the Federal Republic. In: History and Society . Vol. 42 (2016), pp. 669-684.
• Margit Szöllösi-Janze : Gerhard A. Ritter (1929–2015). In: Historical magazine . Vol. 302 (2016), pp. 277-289.
• James J. Sheehan: Memorial. Gerhard A. Ritter (1929-2015). In: Central European History . Vol. 48 (2015), pp. 458-460.
• Hans F. Zacher : laudation for Gerhard A. Ritter on his 80th birthday. In: Ulrich Becker , Hans Günter Hockerts , Klaus Tenfelde (eds.): Sozialstaat Deutschland. Past and present (= series of political and social history. Vol. 87). Dietz, Bonn 2010, ISBN 978-3-8012-4198-8 , pp. 343-351.
• Who is who? The German Who's Who. LI. Edition 2013/2014, p. 912f.
• Wolfgang Hardtwig : History as a theory of democracy. Gerhard A. Ritter for an honorary doctorate. Lectures on the occasion of the awarding of an honorary doctorate to Gerhard A. Ritter, July 2nd, 1999 (= public lectures. Vol. 102). Humboldt University, Berlin 1999 ( online ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard A. Ritter in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gerhard A. Ritter on the website of the LMU Munich
• Biographical information on the website of the Historical Commission for Westphalia
• Obituary at St Antony's College Oxford
• Ninth award of the Historical College Prize on November 9, 2007 to Professor Dr. Gerhard A. Ritter [in it: laudation by Klaus Hildebrand on Gerhard A. Ritter and lecture “The German Reunification” by Gerhard A. Ritter].
• Prof. Dr. Gerhard A. Ritter at the Historical Commission for Westphalia

Remarks

1. ↑ Jürgen Kocka: Careful innovator. Gerhard A. Ritter and social history in the Federal Republic. In: History and Society. Vol. 42 (2016), pp. 669-684, here: p. 671.
2. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze : Gerhard A. Ritter (1929–2015). In: Historical magazine . Vol. 302 (2016), pp. 277–289, here: p. 277. Cf. in detail: Friedrich Meinecke. Academic teacher and emigrated student. Letters and notes 1910–1977. Introduced and edited by Gerhard A. Ritter. Munich 2006.
3. ↑ Andreas Helle, Söhnke Schreyer, Marcus Gräser : Discipling History and History of Democracy. On the development of political and historical science in Germany after 1945. A conversation with Gerhard A. Ritter. In: Marcus Gräser, Christian Lammert , Söhnke Schreyer (Eds.): State, Nation, Democracy, Traditions and Perspectives of Modern History. Festschrift for Hans-Jürgen Puhle. Göttingen 2001, pp. 270–278, here: p. 270.
4. ↑ Rüdiger Hohls , Konrad H. Jarausch (Ed.): Missed questions. German historians in the shadow of National Socialism. Stuttgart et al. 2000, pp. 118–143 and 467, here: p. 121. (interview online ).
5. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze: Gerhard A. Ritter (1929–2015). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 302 (2016), pp. 277–289, here: p. 279.
6. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Encounters with Émigré Historians of the First and Second Generation. In: Andreas W. Daum , Hartmut Lehmann , James J. Sheehan (eds.): The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians. With a Biobibliographic Guide. New York / Oxford 2016, pp. 304–317.
7. ↑ Hans F. Zacher : Laudation for Gerhard A. Ritter on his 80th birthday. In: Ulrich Becker, Hans Günter Hockerts , Klaus Tenfelde (eds.): Sozialstaat Deutschland. History and present. Bonn 2010, pp. 343–351, here: p. 351.
8. ↑ Jürgen Kocka: Careful innovator. Gerhard A. Ritter and social history in the Federal Republic. In: History and Society . Vol. 42 (2016), pp. 669-684, here: p. 670.
9. ↑ Jürgen Kocka: Careful innovator. Gerhard A. Ritter and social history in the Federal Republic. In: History and Society. Vol. 42 (2016), pp. 669-684, here: p. 672.
10. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: The British Labor Movement and its Policy towards Russia from the First Russian Revolution (1917) until the Treaty of Locarno. Oxford B. Litt. Thesis 1959.
11. ↑ Hans F. Zacher: Laudation for Gerhard A. Ritter on his 80th birthday. In: Ulrich Becker, Hans Günter Hockerts, Klaus Tenfelde (eds.): Sozialstaat Deutschland. History and present. Bonn 2010, pp. 343–351, here: p. 346.
12. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places. Berlin 2018, p. 572.
13. ^ "Gerhard A. Ritter - pupils, colleagues, companions and friends remember his personality" .
14. ^ Symposium in memory of Gerhard A. Ritter, October 6, 2016 - October 7, 2016 Berlin. In: H-Soz-Kult , August 12, 2016, online .
15. ↑ See also Paul Nolte : Obituary for Gerhard A. Ritter. No democracy without a welfare state. In: Der Tagesspiegel , June 22, 2015 ( online ). Review by Helga Grebing about Gerhard A. Ritter: The German political parties 1830–1914. Parties and society in the constitutional system of government. In: Historical magazine. Vol. 246 (1988), pp. 451-453, here: p. 451.
16. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Encounters with Émigré Historians of the First and Second Generation. In: Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, James J. Sheehan (eds.): The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians. With a Biobibliographic Guide. New York / Oxford 2016, pp. 304–317.
17. ↑ See also Margit Szöllösi-Janze: Gerhard A. Ritter (1929–2015). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 302 (2016), pp. 277–289, here: p. 279.
18. ↑ Jürgen Kocka: Careful innovator. Gerhard A. Ritter and social history in the Federal Republic. In: History and Society. Vol. 42 (2016), pp. 669-684, here: p. 683.
19. ↑ Rüdiger Hohls, Konrad H. Jarausch (Ed.): Missed questions. German historians in the shadow of National Socialism. Stuttgart et al. 2000, pp. 118–143 and 467, here: p. 135 (interview online ).
20. ↑ Jürgen Kocka: Careful innovator. Gerhard A. Ritter and social history in the Federal Republic. In: History and Society. Vol. 42 (2016), pp. 669-684, here: p. 680.
21. ↑ See Jürgen Kocka: Cautionary renewer. Gerhard A. Ritter and social history in the Federal Republic. In: History and Society. Vol. 42 (2016), pp. 669-684, here: p. 676.
22. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: German and British Parliamentarism. A constitutional comparison. Tübingen 1962. Revised and expanded in Gerhard A. Ritter: Workers' Movement, Parties and Parliamentarism. Essays on German social and constitutional history in the 19th and 20th centuries. Goettingen 1976.
23. ↑ Jürgen Kocka: Careful innovator. Gerhard A. Ritter and social history in the Federal Republic. In: History and Society. Vol. 42 (2016), pp. 669-684, here: p. 673.
24. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Divine Right and Prerogative of the English Kings 1603–1640. In: Historical magazine. 196, 1963, pp. 584-625.
25. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze: Gerhard A. Ritter (1929–2015). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 302 (2016), pp. 277–289, here: p. 282.
26. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: The German parties 1830-1914. Göttingen 1985.
27. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze: Gerhard A. Ritter (1929–2015). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 302 (2016), pp. 277–289, here: p. 283.
28. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter, Gerald D. Feldman, Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich and Peter-Christian Witt: The experiences of inflation in an international context and comparison. Berlin 1984; This. (Ed.): Adjusting to inflation. Berlin 1986; This. (Ed.): Consequences of inflation. The Consequences of Inflation. Berlin 1989.
29. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Social insurance in Germany and England. Origin and main features in comparison. Munich 1983.
30. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: The welfare state. Origin and development in an international comparison. Munich 1989.
31. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze: Gerhard A. Ritter (1929–2015). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 302 (2016), pp. 277–289, here: p. 284.
32. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter: The recent social history in the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Jürgen Kocka (Ed.): Social history in an international overview. Research results and trends. Darmstadt 1989, pp. 19-88; revised and expanded as Gerhard A. Ritter: The New Social History in the Federal Republic of Germany. London 1991.
33. ^ Foreword in Gerhard A. Ritter: Social question and social policy in Germany since the beginning of the 19th century. Opladen 1998.
34. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter (Ed.): 1989–1994. Federal Republic of Germany. Social policy under the sign of unification. Baden-Baden 2007.
35. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: About Germany. The Federal Republic in German History. Munich 1998, p. 9.
36. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: About Germany. The Federal Republic in German History. Munich 1998, p. 10.
37. ^ Klaus Hildebrand : Laudation for Gerhard A. Ritter. In: Historical magazine. Vol. 286, (2008) pp. 281-288, here: p. 283.
38. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter: The price of German unity. The reunification and the crisis of the welfare state. Munich 2006, p. 159.
39. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter: The price of German unity. The reunification and the crisis of the welfare state. Munich 2006, p. 294.
40. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter: The price of German unity. The reunification and the crisis of the welfare state. Munich 2006, p. 297.
41. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter: The price of German unity. The reunification and the crisis of the welfare state. Munich 2006, p. 133.
42. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter: The price of German unity. The reunification and the crisis of the welfare state. Munich 2006, p. 403.
43. ↑ See for example the reviews of Peter Borscheid in: Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte . Vol. 54 (2009), pp. 125f .; Carsten Kretschmann in: Historical magazine. 286 (2008), pp. 821-823; Rainer Blasius : The cushioned time. The welfare state, reunification and the improvisational power of the ministerial bureaucracy. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 12, 2007, No. 36, p. 7 ( online ).
44. ↑ Reviews of André Steiner in: H-Soz-Kult , September 20, 2007 ( online ); Stefan Schieren in: Journal for Parliamentary Issues . Issue 2/2007, pp. 415-435 ( online ); Andreas Wirsching in: Archive for Social History Vol. 53 (2013) ( online ).
45. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter: We are the people! We are one people! History of German Unification. Munich 2009.
46. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter: We are the people! We are one people! History of German Unification. Munich 2009, p. 8.
47. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the Foreign Office and the German Association. Munich 2013, p. 7.
48. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the Foreign Office and the German Association. Munich 2013, p. 9f.
49. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the Foreign Office and the German Association. Munich 2013, p. 183.
50. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the Foreign Office and the German Association. Munich 2013, p. 186.
51. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Hans Herzfeld. Personality and work. In: Otto Büsch (Ed.): Hans Herzfeld. Personality and work. Berlin 1983, pp. 13-91.
52. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: Großforschung in Deutschland. Munich 1992.
53. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: 50 years of the Leo Baeck Institute. Problems and tendencies in research into German-Jewish history since the Second World War. In: Klaus Hildebrand (Ed.): History and Knowledge of Time. From Enlightenment to the Present. Festschrift for the 65th birthday of Horst Möller. Munich 2008, pp. 585-595.
54. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: The displacement of Friedrich Meinecke as editor of the historical journal 1933-1935. In: Dieter Hein , Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Schulz (eds.): History and life. The historian as a scientist and contemporary. Festschrift for Lothar Gall on his 70th birthday. Munich 2006, pp. 65-88.
55. ^ Gerhard A. Ritter: The Meinecke students who emigrated to the United States. Life and historiography in the field of tension between Germany and the new home: Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert, Dietrich Gerhard, Hans Rosenberg. In: Historical magazine. Vol. 284 (2007), pp. 59-102.
56. ↑ Jens Thiel: Against "every spiritual provincialism". Gerhard A. Ritter as chairman of the Association of Historians (1976 to 1980). In: VHD-Journal 6 (2017), pp. 100-102.
57. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze: Gerhard A. Ritter (1929–2015). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 302 (2016), pp. 277–289, here: p. 286.
58. ↑ See also Paul Nolte : Obituary for Gerhard A. Ritter. No democracy without a welfare state. In: Der Tagesspiegel , June 22, 2015 ( online ).
59. ↑ Gerhard A. Ritter: The reconstruction of historical studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin - a field report. In: History in Science and Education . 44: 226-237 (1993). Gerhard A. Ritter: The Reconstruction of History at the Humboldt University. A reply. In: German History 11, 1993, pp. 339-345.
60. ↑ See in detail Winfried Schulze : Der Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft 1920–1995. Berlin 1995, pp. 266-273.
61. ↑ Jürgen Kocka: Careful innovator. Gerhard A. Ritter and social history in the Federal Republic. In: History and Society. Vol. 42 (2016), pp. 669-684, here: p. 682.
62. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze: Gerhard A. Ritter (1929–2015). In: Historical magazine. Vol. 302 (2016), pp. 277–289, here: p. 287.
63. ^ Otto von Freising guest professorship .
64. ↑ Hans F. Zacher: Laudation for Gerhard A. Ritter on his 80th birthday. In: Ulrich Becker, Hans Günter Hockerts, Klaus Tenfelde (eds.): Sozialstaat Deutschland. History and present. Bonn 2010, pp. 343–351, here: p. 350.

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