Sophus Ruge
Sophus Ruge (born March 26, 1831 in Dorum , Kingdom of Hanover , † December 23, 1903 in Klotzsche , Kingdom of Saxony ) was a German geographer .
Live and act
Ruge's father Christoph August Ruge (1790–1834) from Neuhaus / Oste was a doctor of medicine. In the battle of Waterloo he was an English field doctor, after the wars of liberation he only worked in Cuxhaven and from 1817 as a district physician in Dorum. There he married the lawyer’s daughter Elise Hennings (* 1804).
After the early death of the father, the mother moved to Stade , where Sophus Ruge attended high school. He then studied theology from 1850 to 1854, but turned to the subjects of history, geography and classical philology, which he studied in Göttingen and Halle / Saale . He found a position as a private tutor in the forester's house Seelzerthurm near Einbeck and returned to Stade as a teacher in 1857. There he married Anna Caecilie (1830–1903), daughter of the Leipzig railway director Friedrich Busse . The marriage should result in four children: Frieda Elisa (* 1860), Reinhold Friedrich (* 1862), Walther Karl Theodor (* 1865; geographer, father of the naval inspector and military writer Friedrich Ruge ) and Elsbeth Sophie (* 1870).
In 1859 Ruge moved to Dresden and took up a teaching position at the business school of the merchants.
Together with Karl Andree , Sophus Ruge founded the Geography Association in Dresden in 1863 , which he chaired from 1874 to 1903 and whose annual reports gained reputation as publisher.
He received his doctorate in 1864 at the University of Leipzig under Heinrich Wuttke on ancient geography ( Der Chaldäer Seleukos , 1865). Ruge had been a senior teacher at the Annen Realschule in Dresden since 1870 and completed his habilitation in 1872 ( The Relationship between Geography and Related Sciences , 1874) at the Dresden Polytechnic , one of the forerunners of today's Technical University . In the same year he had a position as a private lecturer at this educational institution and in 1874 he was given the newly established professorship for geography and ethnography , which he held until his illness-related leave of absence in 1903.
In 1877 he was one of the founders of the mountain association for Saxon-Bohemian Switzerland , whose first chairman until 1885 and later an honorary member. In the early years in particular, he wrote articles for the association body Über Berg und Thal, which he co-founded in 1878 .
His main scientific work related to the history of geography and cartography, with a focus on the age of discovery and the representation of the cartographic development of the New World . Through a material systematization, he turned geography into an academic subject. In addition, he was instrumental in revising and revising several textbooks with in-depth source studies. From 1878 he revised The History of Geography (founded by Oscar Ferdinand Peschel ) and from 1887 The Description of the Earth (founded by Franz Heinrich Ungewitter ). In the Saxon regional geography, ethnology was one of his focuses. Hikes undertaken with the painter Ludwig Richter , including to Saxon Switzerland and the Bohemian Forest , resulted in further works that were reprinted decades after his death.
Ruge was a member of numerous other associations and scientific institutions. Since 1894 he was a full member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig , from 1897 also in the Association for Saxon Folklore in Dresden. He was a member of the Royal Commission for History, was a corresponding member of the geographic societies in Berlin, Amsterdam and Lisbon and an honorary member of the geographic societies in Dresden, Leipzig, Hamburg and Munich. Outside of these clubs and societies, too, he gave numerous public lectures, which not infrequently conveyed geographical and cartographic knowledge from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Sophus Ruge died on December 23, 1903 in Klotzsche near Dresden, where he owned the villa "Wilhelmsheim" in the Königswald district on Bahnhofstrasse (now Wolgaster Strasse). His grave is in the old cemetery in Klotzsche . In his honor in Dresden's southern suburb , the former Bendemannstrasse was renamed " Rugestrasse " after 1945 . While he was still alive, he was awarded the Knight's Cross First Class of the Saxon Order of Albrecht and the Knight's Cross of the Mecklenburg Order of the Wendish Crown , and since 1902 he has also been a councilor.
Fonts (selection)
- History of the Age of Discovery , Berlin 1881–83 (= general history in individual representations ).
- Treatises and lectures on the history of geography , Dresden 1888.
- Dresden and Saxon Switzerland , Bielefeld 1903.
literature
- Werner Stams: Ruge, Sophus. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 234 ( digitized version ).
- Marianne and Werner Stams: The life's work of the geographer and historian Sophus Ruge, the founder of geographic university teaching in Dresden. With a list of works and a list of biographical publications. In: New Archive for Saxon History 73 (2002), pp. 113–150.
Web links
- Literature by and about Sophus Ruge in the catalog of the German National Library
- Brigitte Emmrich: Ruge, Sophus . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ruge, Sophus |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German geographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 26, 1831 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dorum , Kingdom of Hanover |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 23, 1903 |
| Place of death | Klotzsche , Kingdom of Saxony |