Hellmut Ritter

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Hellmut Ritter (born February 27, 1892 in Hessisch Lichtenau , † May 19, 1971 in Oberursel ; also written Helmuth Ritter ) was a German orientalist .

Life

The son of the Protestant pastor Gottfried Theodor Ritter attended grammar school in Gütersloh. His brothers were the historian Gerhard Ritter and the theologian Karl Bernhard Ritter . After studying with Carl Brockelmann and Paul Kahle in Halle and Carl Heinrich Becker in Strasbourg from 1910 to 1913, he worked for a year as Aby Warburg's assistant at the University of Hamburg and from 1914 to 1918 interpreter for Arabic, Turkish and Persian for German Troop units in Iraq and Palestine. In addition, from 1914 to 1919 he worked at the chair of Carl Heinrich Becker, where he completed his habilitation in 1919 . He then accepted a professorship at Hamburg University, where he wrote several papers in the years that followed.

In 1925 he was convicted of Section 175 and sentenced to prison. Ritter then went to Istanbul in 1926 on behalf of the German Oriental Society , where he took over the management of the branch there. He promoted the Islamic studies research through increased use of manuscript collections and located in Istanbul of the central archives of the Ottoman Empire and made sure that the disciplines so far only marginally represented Turkic , Ottoman and Turkey customer found increased interest in Germany. From 1935 on, Ritter also taught as a professor of oriental philology at Istanbul University, where he insisted that his students learn a new language every year. Ritter was chairman of the Istanbul Oriental Institute. His successor was his former assistant and student, the Turkish orientalist Ahmed Ateş .

During the Nazi era, Ritter stayed in Istanbul. He firmly rejected the Nazi regime.

In 1949 he returned to Germany and in 1953 took over a professorship at the Oriental Seminary at the University of Frankfurt , where he retired in 1956 . He then moved back to Istanbul and resumed teaching at Istanbul University. His main focus now also included the study of Turoyo , an Eastern American language. One of his most famous students is Fuat Sezgin , the founder of the Institute for the History of Arab-Islamic Sciences . Since 1966 he was a corresponding member of the British Academy .

At the age of 77, Hellmut Ritter retired in 1969 and returned to Germany. He died in Oberursel in 1971.

Publications (selection)

  • About Nizami's imagery. 1927.
  • al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā an-Naubaḫtī. The sects of the Schia. (Edition of the Arabic text), ed. by Helmut Ritter. 1931. 115 pp. Arab. Text.
  • Karage. Turkish shadow plays, ed. over and ext. by Helmut Ritter. Istanbul 1941. XIX, 337 p. German and Turkish text, Ill.
  • Ahmad Ghazzali: Aphorisms on Love , ed. by Hellmut Ritter. 1942. VII German text and 106 p. Arab. Text.
  • Philologika XIII. Arabic manuscripts in Anatolia and Istanbul. In: Oriens 2, 1949, 236-314.
  • Asrar al-balagha, the mysteries of eloquence. 1954.
  • The sea of ​​the soul. Man, world and God in the stories of Farīduddīn ʿAṭṭār . Leiden 1955.
  • The secrets of the word art (Asrār al-balāgha) of ʿAbdalqāhir al-Curcānī. Translated from Arabic and annotated by Hellmut Ritter. 1959. 33 * u. 479 pp. German text.
  • Al Ghasâli: The Elixir of Bliss . Düsseldorf 1959 (2nd edition 1981). [ Selected translation from Kīmiyā-i saʿādat and Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm ad-dīn , both by Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ġazālī.]
  • Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Ismāʿīl al-Asʿarī: The dogmatic followers of the teachings of Islam . [Edition of the Arabic text] ed. by Hellmut Ritter. 1963. XXXIII, 677 pp. Arab. Text.
  • Tūrōyo: The vernacular of the Syrian Christians of the Tūr ʿAbdîn. Edited by the Orient Institute of the German Oriental Society, Beirut. 5 volumes. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1967–1990.
  • Fariduddin Attar : Stories and Aphorisms of the Persian Poet and Mystic. Translated by Hellmut Ritter. Tiessen, Neu-Isenburg 1995, ISBN 3-928395-12-2 .

estate

Part of Hellmut Ritter's estate is kept as a deposit in the Hessian State Archives in Marburg (inventory 340 Ritter b).

literature

documentary

  • Hayal (BRD / Turkey 1990, with Merlyn Solakhan, Manfred Blank, among others) is a documentary about the Karagöz game as well as the life and work of Ritters, who spent most of his working life in Istanbul and to whom we owe almost everything that we have about the Karagöz game today knowledge.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller : Man for man. Biographisches Lexikon , Hamburg 1998, p. 588
  2. ↑ ibid
  3. ↑ Overview of the holdings "Familienarchiv Ritter"  (HStAM holdings 340 Ritter b). In: Archive Information System Hessen (Arcinsys Hessen), status: 2003, accessed on July 3, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Knight, Hellmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ritter, Helmuth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Hessian Lichtenau
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1971
Place of death Oberursel