Gerhard Ritter

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Gerhard Georg Bernhard Ritter (born April 6, 1888 in Sooden ; † July 1, 1967 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German historian . He taught from 1925 to 1956 at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg im Breisgau and had a lasting impact on German history in the post-war period .

Life

The son of the Lutheran pastor Gottfried Theodor Ritter and Charlotte Schaub attended the pietistic Evangelical Stiftische Gymnasium in Gütersloh . He had four brothers and two sisters, including the orientalist Hellmut Ritter , the industrialist Friedbert Ritter and the theologian Karl Bernhard Ritter . After graduating from high school, Gerhard Ritter studied from 1906 at the universities of Munich , Heidelberg , Leipzig and Berlin . He received his doctorate from Hermann Oncken on The Prussian Conservatives and Bismarck's German Politics 1858–1876 . After receiving his doctorate in 1912, Ritter worked as a high school teacher in Magdeburg .

In the First World War he fought first on the Eastern Front and was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve. He experienced the conquest of Warsaw in the summer of 1915 as the fulfillment of long-cherished hope. Since 1916 he was also in use in the West . There he was severely wounded several times, for example during the Battle of the Somme , and was awarded the Iron Cross (1st class).

After the end of the war, he was commissioned by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences for a history of Heidelberg University to embark on the academic career of a historian.

In 1919 Ritter married Gertrud Reichardt, daughter of a wealthy Baden official, with whom he had three children, Berthold, Renate and Friedrich. Preliminary studies on the intellectual history of late scholasticism provided the basis for his habilitation in 1921, with studies on late scholasticism , again at Oncken in Heidelberg, where he also taught from 1918 to 1923, before and after his habilitation. His first appointment to a professorship led him to the University of Hamburg in 1924 . In the following year he accepted the professorship, which he held until his retirement at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (1925–1956). Ritter's appointment to Freiburg was, however, very controversial because of his German national and anti-constitutional attitude. In the Catholic milieu of Freiburg, the determined Lutheran initially met with a certain amount of mistrust, which only overcame their mutual opposition to the Nazi regime. His academic students included a. Franz Büchler , Wilhelm Deist , Waldemar Erfurth , Michael Freund , Erich Hassinger , Hermann Heidegger , Karl-Heinz Janßen , Hugo Menze , Manfred Messerschmidt , Richard Nürnberger , Gerhard Schildt , Klaus Schwabe , Rudolf Stadelmann , Wolfgang Steglich , Max Steinmetz , Peter von Zahn and Ernst Walter Zeeden .

Ritter played a key role in the establishment of the German Association of Historians on October 12, 1948, and in 1949 became its first chairman. He ensured a conservative line in his favor. He also made a significant contribution to the reconstitution of history lessons. He supported the re-establishment of the Association of History Teachers in Germany in 1949 and worked on the publication of new history textbooks. They should represent German history between "self-dishonor" and "self-arrogance". In 1962 he also turned against the new subject of community studies and methodological innovations such as group work , which for him should lead to "endless chatter". His opinion, published in GWU , had a strong impact on conservative history teachers. In 1955 he was admitted to the board of the “Comité international des sciences historiques”. Even after his retirement, Ritter remained active in research and journalism.

He was a member of the science academies in Heidelberg , Berlin and Munich , the Reich Historical Commission , the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei , the Royal Historical Society , the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Comité International des Sciences Historiques .

Ritter died after a short illness almost a year before his 80th birthday. His grave is not far from his holiday home in Saig in the Black Forest. Part of Ritter's estate is kept as a deposit in the Hessian State Archive in Marburg (inventory 340 Ritter b). The more important part, however, is in the Koblenz Federal Archives , with its extensive scientific correspondence standing out.

plant

Ritter's dissertation, published as a book, on the Prussian-conservative opposition to Bismarck's German unification policy was largely based on unpublished material and gave the impetus for further publications on the monarchical idea in Prussia, the Greater-German-Lesser-German problem and the history of the parties.

In 1925, Ritter published a biography of Martin Luther that portrayed Luther positively. It was a commissioned work, of which he brought out revised new editions until after 1945. At the beginning, Luther's profile as a “religious genius”, as the founder of a new Reformation theology and, from the perspective of the 1920s, also as the embodiment of the “eternal German” was in the foreground, but later he has the “world impact” and the social ethics of Reformation highlighted.

He wrote further biographies about the Prussian statesman Karl Freiherr vom und zum Stein , the Prussian King Friedrich the Great and in the 1950s about his friend Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , who was executed as a resistance fighter after July 20, 1944 . Ritter's oeuvre was very diverse - with topics from the late Middle Ages to contemporary history.

One of Ritter's main works was also related to an external cause, the hundredth year of the death of Freiherr vom Stein. In his extensive "political biography", which, after thorough source studies, embedded the Prussian politician in the background of the Napoleonic period and the German wars of freedom, Ritter wanted the imperial baron to emerge as an exponent of a specifically German early liberalism and co-founder of an all-German national sentiment, whose dubious excesses he admittedly also criticized.

The third biography, which Ritter published before the Second World War and which dealt with Frederick the Great, can only be understood against the background of the Nazi dictatorship. This made the Prussian king the forerunner of Hitler. Ritter wanted to take countermeasures by highlighting the “historical profile” of the monarch as an enlightened counter-image to the Nazi dictatorship bound to the rule of law, without, however, expressly naming this purpose with regard to political censorship.

Soon after 1945, Ritter turned to the history of the German resistance. At the request of the Goerdeler family, he wrote a biography of the German Chancellor, who was designated by the men of July 20 and who was murdered by the Nazi judiciary after the failed coup attempt. With this book, Ritter presented the first comprehensive account of the German resistance based on unpublished sources, which, insofar as it relates to Goerdeler's person, has remained valid to this day.

During the Second World War, he was more and more fascinated by the relationship between warfare and politics in Prussia and in the Bismarckian Empire. His four-volume work on the subject of statecraft and war crafts could only appear after the end of the war. Ritter viewed his late work as a contribution to political and military intellectual history, if not to social history. He was concerned with mental attitudes and their origins as well as effects in the area of ​​military-political decisions. He saw the conflict between political and military thinking embodied in the contrast between Bismarck and Moltke in a classic way. During the First World War, Ludendorff, anticipating Hitler, embodied the epitome of militarism for him. In his second volume, Ritter introduced a new approach to interpreting Prussian-German militarism in an international comparison, but then did not pursue it any further. The abundance of files, some of which he had still collected during the war and which was then partly lost due to the impact of the bomb, but also the confrontation with Fritz Fischer's completely different view of the world war, forced him to concentrate on Germany. Here he made a contribution to the internal history of the Bismarck Empire in its final phase in the First World War and to the domestic roots of German world war politics, which is unique in its kind and is still not outdated. He then did not get to the planned further volume on militarism in the Weimar Republic.

Ritter viewed the recording of history as an art and sought creative identification with the human subjects of the past. The main focus of his work was the political, military and cultural history of Germany. He was a traditional historian of German idealism and historicism . Instead of a " story from below ", these tendencies mainly emphasized the special importance of political and military events and the actions of "great men".

Political position

Like his brother Karl Bernhard Ritter, who became a pastor, Ritter belonged to the national conservatives , worked as an election campaigner for the DNVP after 1918 and was briefly a member of the right-wing liberal German People's Party (DVP) from 1929 . He advocated a monarchical form of government for Germany . At the beginning of the National Socialist era , Ritter approved the new regime and its foreign policy.

Ritter was a Lutheran and joined the Confessing Church , which, contrary to the efforts of the German Christians, tried to avert the internal “ conformity ” of the German Evangelical Church . At the end of May 1934 he was one of the four Baden synods of the Barmen Confession Synod , at which the Barmen Theological Declaration was adopted. The Freiburg branch of the Confessing Church brought him into contact with Nazi-critical colleagues and personalities, and from around 1940 also with Carl Goerdeler . Ritter belonged to the conservative opposition and the Freiburg Circle , but was not privy to specific plans such as the coup d'état of July 20, 1944 against Hitler. After its failure, he was on 2 November 1944 in the framework of the Action grid arrested and detained, first in the concentration camp , then in solitary confinement Lehrterstraße . The conquest and liberation of Berlin by the Red Army saved him from a trial before the People's Court with a likely death sentence.

His work Power State and Utopia , published in 1940, and its criticism of the total state inspired a. a. Hans Scholl . After the Second World War, the book came out under the more explicit title The Demony of Power . In it, Ritter compared Machiavelli's state thinking to that of Thomas More and developed a typology of "continental" and "insular" thinking about the problem of the relationship between power and morality and about the paradox that, historically speaking, the establishment of political order again and again depends on the application of physical power. This investigation was intended as a rejection of the morally unrelated, purely militant power state in the sense of Machiavelli - or Hitler. Although since 1943 Ritter gave in new editions of his book to understand that he was more inclined to More than Machiavelli, he could only hint at his criticism of the regime between the lines and was therefore sometimes misunderstood.

Ritter later pursued the political intention of elevating the motives and plans of July 20 to "constitutive elements of the state order" of the Federal Republic of Germany.

After the end of the war, Ritter wrote his book Europe and the German Question . He rejected the thesis that the “Third Reich” was the inevitable culmination of all of German history. Rather, Ritter believed that National Socialism was only part of an international trend. Not only Germany, according to Ritter, strived for totalitarianism . It is wrong to criticize the Germans too violently. In Ritter's view, the weakness of the Weimar Republic was its “excess” democracy . A powerless democracy let itself be taken over by the appeals of the “pack”. Had the empire , which Ritter advocated, survived the First World War, National Socialism would not have come to power. In the early Federal Republic he was an influential historian.

Fisherman controversy

Ritter became the most vehement critic of the historian Fritz Fischer , who had established lines of continuity between the German Empire and National Socialism. Ritter categorically rejected Fischer's analysis that Germany was primarily responsible for the First World War. This discussion became part of the historiographically significant Fischer controversy . Gerhard Ritter, who saw his life's work in jeopardy because of the German war guilt thesis, described Fischer's book Griff nach der Weltmacht as a “peak” in a “political-historical fashion trend of our days” , by which he meant the alleged “self-obscuration of German historical consciousness” since 1945.

He criticized Fischer's method for not distinguishing between individual dreams or hopes and serious goals, between the tactically correct ambitions of diplomats and demands of the Pan-Germans and the military. Ritter’s third and fourth volumes of Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk were quasi an “apology of Bethmann Hollweg ” and a “single schematization” of domestic German politics during the World War: Bethmann Hollweg's “good” statecraft is contrasted with Erich Ludendorff’s “bad” warfare . Ritter’s criticism of Fischer’s research remained basically biographical. Ritter dismissed the mistakes of German diplomacy and governance as mere "formal errors" imposed by the military.

Fischer wrote that Ritter represented Bethmann Hollweg as a "kind of resistance fighter" against emperors, military, industrialists, party leaders, Junkers, Pan-Germans and the conservative press. In extreme marginal phenomena, Ritter verbally distanced himself from German imperialism and militarism, and so did the main forces in German history to save as moderate.

In March 1964 the Goethe-Institut invited Fischer on a lecture tour to the United States . The fact that the Federal Foreign Office withdrew the funding that had already been granted at the end of January turned into a scandal over the curtailment of public freedom of expression. Ritter had brought about the withdrawal of the funding through several letters to the then Federal Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder . He called it “devastating” and a “national misfortune” that Fischer came up with his theses as a representative of German historical studies. Some US historians, including those expelled from Germany by the Nazi regime, protested publicly against the cancellation of the lecture tour. Finally, US supporters - mostly universities - funded Fischer's trip to the USA.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Prussian Conservatives and Bismarckian German Politics 1858 to 1876. Winter, Heidelberg 1913 (reprint 1976).
  • Luther. Shape and symbol . F. Bruckmann, Munich 1925. After several revisions, 6th edition F. Bruckmann, Munich 1959 with the subtitle Gestalt und Tat .
  • Stone. A political biography. 2 volumes, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart 1931, 3rd edition 1958.
  • Heidelberg University in the Middle Ages (1386–1508). A piece of German history . Volume 1, Winter, Heidelberg 1936; 2nd edition 1986, ISBN 3-533-03742-8 .
  • Frederick the Great. A historical profile . Source u. Meyer, Leipzig 1936, 2nd edition 1954.
  • Power state and utopia. From the dispute over the demonia of power since Macchiavelli and More . Oldenbourg, Munich 1940. 5. reworked. Edition: The Demony of Power. Reflections on the history and nature of the power problem in political thought in modern times . Hannsmann, Stuttgart 1947. 6th edition Oldenbourg, Munich 1948. Engl. U. Italian translations.
  • Berthold Ritter in memory. Südverlag, Constance 1942.
  • The World Impact of the Reformation [Collected Essays]. Koehler et al. Amelang, Leipzig 1944.
  • Living past. Contributions to historical self-reflection. Koehler et al. Amelang, Leipzig 1942 [not delivered].
  • The German professor in the “Third Reich”. In: Die Gegenwart 1,1 (1945), pp. 23-26.
  • History as an educational power. A contribution to the historical-political redefinition. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1946.
  • Of the meaning of the sacrifice of death. In memory of our war-fallen sons. F. Hanfstaengl, Munich 1947.
  • The new history lesson. Draft guidelines in secondary schools . In: Die Sammlung 2 (1947), pp. 442-462.
  • Die Demonie der Macht etc. Hannsmann, Stuttgart 1947, 5th revised edition of the book Machtstaat und Utopie .
  • From the moral problem of power . [Articles] A. Francke, Bern 1948, 2nd edition 1961.
  • Human rights and Christianity. In: Zeitwende 21,1 (1949), pp. 1–12.
  • The reorganization of Germany and Europe in the 16th century . Druckhaus Tempelhof, Berlin 1950. New edition. 1959.
  • Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and the German resistance movement . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart 1954. Last edition 1984. Engl., French. u. Italian translations.
  • The Schlieffen Plan. Criticism of a myth. With the first publication of the texts. Oldenbourg, Munich 1956.
  • Statesmanship and the arts of war. The problem of "militarism" in Germany. 4 volumes, Oldenbourg, Munich 1954–1968. Engl. Transl. 1969.
  • Living past. Contributions to historical-political self-reflection. For the author's 70th birthday, ed. from friends and students. Oldenbourg, Munich 1958.
  • The German problem. Basic questions of German state life yesterday and today. Oldenbourg, Munich 1962.
  • Scientific history then and now. Reflections and memories. In: Historische Zeitschrift 202 (1966), pp. 574-602.
  • Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters , ed. by Klaus Schwabe u. Rolf Reichardt, Boldt, Boppard a. Rh. 1984, ISBN 3-7646-1843-4 .

literature

  • Ulrich Bayer: Gerhard Ritter (1888–1967). In: Johannes Ehmann (Ed.): Pictures of life from the Protestant church in Baden in the 19th and 20th centuries . Volume 2: Church political directions. Publishing house Regionalkultur, Heidelberg u. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-89735-510-1 , pp. 391-415.
  • Christoph Cornelißen : Ritter, Gerhard . In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), Vol. 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , pp. 658–660.
  • Christoph Cornelißen: Working for the “true national community”. The historian Gerhard Ritter under National Socialism. In: Gerhard Hirschfeld , Tobias Jersak (Ed.): Careers in National Socialism. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-593-37156-1 , pp. 319–339.
  • Christoph Cornelißen: Europe and the German special way. Considerations on a pamphlet from 1948 , in: Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History 1 (2004), pp. 469–473.
  • Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and politics in the 20th century (= writings of the Federal Archives. Volume 58). Droste, Düsseldorf 2001, ISBN 3-7700-1612-2 (At the same time: Düsseldorf, University, habilitation paper, 1999/2000).
  • Andreas Dorpalen : Gerhard Ritter. In: Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.): German historians (= Small Vandenhoeck series. Volume 331–333). Vol. 1, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1971, pp. 86-99.
  • Michael Matthiesen: Gerhard Ritter. Studies on life and work up to 1933. 2 volumes, Hänsel-Hohenhausen, Egelsbach 1993, ISBN 3-89349-451-0 .
  • Michael Matthiesen: Lost Identity. The historian Arnold Berney and his Freiburg colleagues 1923–1938. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-525-36233-1 .
  • Klaus Schwabe: Ritter, Gerhard Georg Bernhard, historian. In: Baden-Württembergische Biographien , 1, Stuttgart 1994, pp. 299-303.
  • Klaus Schwabe: Gerhard Ritter. Change and continuities of his historiography under the sign of the German catastrophe (1933–1950). In: Hermann Schäfer (Ed.): History in Responsibility. Festschrift for Hugo Ott on his 65th birthday. Campus, Frankfurt 1996, pp. 239-267.
  • Klaus Schwabe, Rolf Reichardt, with the assistance of Reinhard Hauf (ed.): Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters. Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard 1984. Therein: pp. 1–170: biographical introduction; P. 635–774: Freiburg Resistance Memorandum, P. 775–805: List of publications.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen : Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Düsseldorf 2001, pp. 29, 38 ff.
  2. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Düsseldorf 2001, p. 24.
  3. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Düsseldorf 2001, p. 77.
  4. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Droste, Düsseldorf 2001, pp. 76 ff. And 86.
  5. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Droste, Düsseldorf 2001, p. 111 and 115.
  6. ↑ Marcel vom Lehn: West German and Italian historians as intellectuals? How you deal with National Socialism and Fascism in the mass media (1943 / 45–1960). Göttingen 2012, p. 51, writes that Ritter moved to Freiburg in 1927.
  7. ↑ Folker Reichert: Learned life. Karl Hampe, the Middle Ages and the history of the Germans. Göttingen 2009, p. 162.
  8. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Droste, Düsseldorf 2001, p. 150 ff.
  9. ↑ Manfred Kehrig: “… and not form a state within a state. Sketches for the Development of Military Archives 1945–1955 ”. In: Friedrich P. Kahlenberg (Ed.): From the work of the archives. Contributions to archives, source studies and history. Festschrift for Hans Booms (= writings of the Federal Archives . Vol. 36). Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1989, ISBN 3-7646-1892-2 , pp. 368-408, here: p. 383; see. Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter: History and politics in the 20th century . Düsseldorf 2001, p. 170.
  10. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter: History and politics in the 20th century . Düsseldorf 2001, p. 462.
  11. ↑ Marcel vom Lehn: West German and Italian historians as intellectuals? How you deal with National Socialism and Fascism in the mass media (1943 / 45–1960). Göttingen 2012, p. 53.
  12. ^ Bärbel Kuhn: Historical education as world and human studies. In: Wolfgang Hasberg, Manfred Seidenfuß (Hrsg.): Modernization in transition. History didactics and history lessons after 1945. Münster a. a. 2008, pp. 361-376.
  13. ↑ Klaus Schwabe : Gerhard Ritter. In: Baden-Württembergische Biographien , Volume 1, Stuttgart 1994, p. 302.
  14. ↑ Overview of the holdings "Familienarchiv Ritter"  (HStAM holdings: 340 Ritter b). In: Archive Information System Hessen (Arcinsys Hessen), accessed on July 3, 2011.
  15. ↑ Klaus Schwabe: For the introduction. Gerhard Ritter - work and person. In: Klaus Schwabe, Rolf Reichardt (Ed.): Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters. Boldt, Boppard 1984, p. 17 f.
  16. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Düsseldorf 2001, SV
  17. ↑ Klaus Schwabe: For the introduction. Gerhard Ritter - work and person. In: Klaus Schwabe, Rolf Reichardt (Ed.): Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters. Boldt, Boppard 1984, p. 31 ff.
  18. ↑ Klaus Schwabe: For the introduction. Gerhard Ritter - work and person. In: Klaus Schwabe, Rolf Reichardt (Ed.): Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters. Boldt, Boppard 1984, pp. 39 ff., 127, 289 f., 301 and 324.
  19. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Droste, Düsseldorf 2001, pp. 554-557.
    Klaus Schwabe, Rolf Reichardt (ed.): Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters. Boldt, Boppard 1984, p. 339.
  20. ↑ Klaus Schwabe: For the introduction. Gerhard Ritter - work and person. In: Klaus Schwabe, Rolf Reichardt (Ed.): Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters. Boldt, Boppard 1984, p. 7 f.
  21. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Droste, Düsseldorf 2001, pp. 561-588.
    Klaus Schwabe: As an introduction. Gerhard Ritter - work and person. In: Klaus Schwabe, Rolf Reichardt (Ed.): Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters. Boldt, Boppard 1984, pp. 129-145.
  22. ↑ Marcel vom Lehn: West German and Italian historians as intellectuals? How you deal with National Socialism and Fascism in the mass media (1943 / 45–1960). Göttingen 2012, p. 51.
  23. ↑ Marcel vom Lehn: West German and Italian historians as intellectuals? How you deal with National Socialism and Fascism in the mass media (1943 / 45–1960). Göttingen 2012, p. 52.
  24. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 488.
  25. ↑ Marcel vom Lehn: West German and Italian historians as intellectuals? How you deal with National Socialism and Fascism in the mass media (1943 / 45–1960). Göttingen 2012, p. 52, on the other hand, writes: " National Socialism disgusted Ritter [...] When the NSDAP won the elections in March 1933, Ritter is said to have cried."
  26. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Düsseldorf 2001, pp. 340 and 355 ff.
  27. ↑ Klaus Schwabe: For the introduction. Gerhard Ritter - work and person. In: Klaus Schwabe, Rolf Reichardt (Ed.): Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters. Boppard am Rhein 1984, pp. 1–170, here: pp. 8 ff., 89 ff.
  28. ^ Sönke Zankel : With leaflets against Hitler. The resistance group around Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell. Cologne u. a. 2007, pp. 230-234.
  29. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Droste, Düsseldorf 2001, pp. 316–326. Klaus Schwabe: As an introduction. Gerhard Ritter - work and person. In: Klaus Schwabe, Rolf Reichardt (Ed.): Gerhard Ritter. A political historian in his letters. Boppard am Rhein 1984, pp. 1–170, here: pp. 53 f., 427, 433.
  30. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century. Düsseldorf 2001, p. 560.
  31. ^ Karl-Heinz Janßen : Gerhard Ritter: A Patriotic Historian's Justification . In: Hannsjoachim Wolfgang Koch: The Origins of the First World War. Great Power Rivalry and German War Aims. London 1993, pp. 292-318, here p. 293; and Gregor Schöllgen : “Fischer Controversy” and the problem of continuity. German war targets in the age of the world wars. In: Andreas Hillgruber , Jost Dülffer (Ed.): Ploetz. History of world wars. Powers, events, developments 1900–1945. Freiburg u. a. 1981, pp. 163-177, here: p. 169.
  32. ^ Karl-Heinz Janßen: Gerhard Ritter: A Patriotic Historian's Justification. In: Hannsjoachim Wolfgang Koch: The Origins of the First World War. Great Power Rivalry and German War Aims. London 1993, pp. 292-318, here: p. 304; Imanuel Geiss : The Fischer Controversy. A critical contribution to the relationship between historiography and politics in the Federal Republic. In: Imanuel Geiss : Studies on history and historical science. Frankfurt am Main 1972, pp. 108–198, here p. 163.
  33. ^ Fritz Fischer: Twenty-Five Years Later: Looking Back at the "Fischer Controversy" and Its Consequences. In: Central European History 21 (1988), pp. 207-223, here: p. 211; Imanuel Geiss: The Fischer Controversy. A critical contribution to the relationship between historiography and politics in the Federal Republic. In: Imanuel Geiss: Studies on history and historical science. Frankfurt am Main 1972, pp. 108–198, here: p. 169.
  34. ↑ Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes, Mosche Zimmermann : The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Blessing, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 , pp. 615-620.
personal data
SURNAME Ritter, Gerhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ritter, Gerhard Georg Bernhard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Sooden-Allendorf
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 1967
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau