Waldemar Ritter

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Waldemar Ritter (* 1933 in Osterode in East Prussia ) is a German political scientist and historian.

Waldemar Ritter (2015)

Life

After the end of the Second World War, schools and work in Aletshausen and Augsburg and the Abitur, Ritter studied political science , public law and history in Munich and Berlin from 1954 to 1960 . In 1963 he received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin. In 1960 he was co-founder and deputy chairman of the Social Democratic University Association .

In 1964 Willy Brandt and Ritter laid the "European foundation stone of peace" in Aachen

In 1961, at the suggestion of Waldemar von Knoeringen , Ritter became the spokesman for youth and education policy for the SPD party executive, developed guidelines for youth and education policy, was a member of the Federal Youth Board of Trustees and initiator of the European Youth Council. In 1964, Willy Brandt and Ritter laid the “European foundation stone of peace” in Aachen. In 1968 he became the spokesman for the German Federal Youth Association and the Ring of Political Youth at the central protest demonstration against the Soviet invasion of the CSSR .

At the request of the SPD politician Herbert Wehner , Ritter was head of the department for fundamental issues in the Federal Ministry for all-German issues from 1967 . In 1975 he became Ministerialdirigent in the Federal Ministry for German domestic relations. His focus was on German politics , the media, research on Germany, the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Process), internal German encounters, cultural relations and cultural policy. He was a representative of the Federal Government in the German-German Culture Commission, in the Joint Education and Science Commission and in the negotiations on the German Unification Treaty . Waldemar Ritter explained his German policy objectives at the Wilton Park Conference in his letter on German unity on August 12, 1970 "... to work towards a state of peace in Europe in which the German people can regain their unity in free self-determination".

After the reunification of Germany , Ritter took over responsibility for the federal government's cultural tasks in the Federal Ministry of the Interior : protection of cultural assets, literature and language, library and archiving, culture and artist promotion, monument protection, churches and religious communities, promotion of German unity in the cultural field, repatriation of cultural goods relocated due to the war . For more than two decades, the focus of his work has been on managing the federal government's domestic cultural affairs.

Waldemar Ritter is regarded as the reunification cultural architect, as the former President of the Conference of Ministers of Education, the Saxony-Anhalt Minister of Culture Karl-Heinz Reck and the President of the German Cultural Council , the Bavarian State Director August Everding have called him. At the same time, he put the interactions between the processes of German and European unity in the foreground, with the express inclusion of the eastern neighbors, and with his publications also triggered the discussion on a European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which turned a "broad constitutional debate on the foundation of European culture and its fundamental values ​​into political Union of the Peoples and States of Europe must follow ”. The first President of the Bundestag Annemarie Renger called him a "surveyor and designer of culture and politics".

Works

His first book “Kurt Schumacher's State and Society” was published in 1964. He then published publications on art and culture, on fundamental questions of politics, the state and society, on Germany and European politics, on history and the state of the nation.

  • 1967: Information for Democrats, pamphlet against the NPD
  • 1969, 1970, 1972 and 1974: (Political Discussion Group of the Federal Government) Report and materials on the state of the nation
  • 1991 and 1993: Cultural policy tasks in United Germany
  • 1994: "State contra culture?" "Cultural nation without a state?" Yearbook of the German Academy for Language and Poetry
  • 1995 and 1997: "Cultural Policy in the Process of Germany's Internal Unity"
  • 1996: Cultura Europea (Universidad de Navara) "... y de identidad cultural europea"
  • 1996: Muses, Museums and History
  • 1997 and 1999: "Cultural heritage as booty?"
  • 1998: Cultural Property (Cambridge University): "The Soviet Spoils Commissions: On the Removal of Works of Art from German Museums and Collections"
  • 1999: "Germany - Cultural Land in Europe - Considerations on European Cultural Heritage"
  • 1999: "Michaelsteinenses" (ed.)
  • 2000: "Culture and cultural policy in a united Germany"
  • 2002: "Examples of contemporary art from the new countries"
  • 2004 and 2006: I think of Germany ...: "Visions for Germany - Politics, State and Culture at the Beginning of the 21st Century"
  • 2010: "Hans Limmers artist book about Waldemar Ritter"
  • Newer writings: Articles, interviews, treatises and essays on totalitarianism, right-wing and left-wing extremism, Islamism, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the fall of the wall, the peaceful revolution in the GDR and Central Eastern Europe, Europe, Poland, Ukraine and Russia, to culture and politics

Ritter's legacy is stored in the archive of the social democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung .

Memberships

Waldemar Ritter was a curator / board member / board member in several cultural institutions of national and European standing:

Ritter is on the Board of Trustees of the Leo Baeck Institute (London, Frankfurt / Main, New York, Jerusalem), on the Board of Trustees of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation, on the Board of Trustees of the European Foundation Aachen Cathedral and board member of the Federation of Democratic Resistance Fighters and the Persecuted (BDWV-NRW ).

Awards

Waldemar Ritter received the badge of honor from the German Association of Political Scientists. In 1975 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon and in 1980 the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annemarie Renger : A surveyor and designer of culture and politics. Waldemar Ritter on his seventieth birthday , Kulturpolitische Nachrichten, No. 101, II / 2003
  2. ^ Announcement from the Ordenskanzlei in the Office of the Federal President.
personal data
SURNAME Knight, Waldemar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Osterode in East Prussia