Gerhard Ritter

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Gerhard Albert Ritter (April 6, 1888-July 1, 1967) was a conservative German historian.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Ritter was born in Bad Sooden-Allendorf, the son of an Lutheran clergyman. He was educated at a gymnasium in Gütersloh and at the universities of Munich, Heidelberg, and Leipzig. From 1912 onwards, Ritter worked as a school-teacher, and fought as an infantryman in the First World War. He married Gertrud Reichardt in 1919, with whom he had three children. Ritter worked as a professor at Heidelberg University, (1918-1923), Hamburg University (1923-1925) and Freiburg University (1925-1956). In 1925, Ritter published a sympathetic biography of Martin Luther that made his reputation as an historian. Later, Ritter was to write biographies of the Prussian statesmen Karl vom Stein and of King Frederick II of Prussia. His biography of Frederick the Great has been described by the American military historian Peter Paret as one of the finest military biographies ever written. Most notably, Ritter wrote an acclaimed biography of Carl Goerdeler, a close friend who was executed by the Nazis. Ritter specialized in German political, military, and cultural history.

Ritter was a staunch German nationalist who belonged to a political movement generally known to historians as National conservatism. Ritter identified with the idea of an authoritarian government in Germany that would make his country Europe's foremost power. Initially, Ritter approved of the Nazi regime and its foreign policy, but he broke with the Nazis over the persecution of the churches. Ritter was a devout Lutheran and was a member of the Confessing Church (a group of dissenting Lutherans who resisted the Nazi-imposed "Aryan Christianity") in the 1930s. Ritter belonged to the conservative opposition to the Nazi regime and was imprisoned in 1944-45[1]. Ritter was one of the few involved in the July 20 Plot of 1944 who was not liquidated by the Nazis.

After World War II, Ritter wrote the book Europa und die deutsche Frage (Europe and the German Question), which denied that the Third Reich was the inevitable product of German history, but was rather in Ritter's view part of a general Europe-wide drift towards totalitarianism that had been going on since the French Revolution, and as such, Germans should not be singled out for criticism[2]. In Ritter's opinion, the orgins of National Socialism went back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's concept of the volonté générale (general will) and the Jacobins[3]. Ritter argued that "National Socialism is not an originally German growth, but the German form of a European phenomenon: the one-party or Führer state", which was the result of "modern industrial society with its uniform mass humanity"[4]. Along the same lines, Ritter wrote "not any event in German history, but the great French Revolution undermined the firm foundation of Europe's political traditions. It also coined the new concepts and slogans with whose help the modern state of the Volk and the Führer justifies its existence"[5]. Ritter argued that throughout the 19th century, there been worrisome signs in Germany and the rest of Europe caused by the entry of masses into politics, but that it was the World War I that marked the decisive turning point[6]. In Ritter's opinion, World War One had caused a general collapse in moral values throughout the West, and it was this moral degeneration that led to the decline of Christianity, the rise of materialism, political corruption, the eclipse of civilization by barbarism, and demagogic politics that in turn led to National Socialism[7]. In Ritter's view, the problem with the Weimar Republic was not that it lacked democracy, but rather had too much democracy[8]. Ritter argued that the democratic republic left the German state open to being hijacked by the appeals of rabble-rousing extremists[9]. In Ritter's view, had his much beloved German Empire continued after 1918, there would have been no Nazi Germany. Ritter argued democracy was the essential precondition of totalitarianism because it created the window of opportunity for a strongman to make himself the personification of the "popular will", leading Ritter to conclude that "the system of 'totalitarian' dicatorship as such is not a specifically German phenomenon" but rather was the natural result of when "the direct rule of the people derived from the 'revolt of the masses' is introduced"[10]. Ritter argued that the precursors of Hitler were "neither Frederick the Great, Bismarck nor Wilhelm II, but the demagogues and Caesars of modern history from Danton to Lenin to Mussolini"[11].

Ritter saw his main task after 1945 of seeking to restore German nationalism against what he regarded as unjust slurs[12]. Ritter argued that Germans needed a positive view of their past, but warned against the appeal of "false concepts of honor and national power"[13]. In his treatment of the German Resistance, Ritter drew a sharp line between those who worked with foreign powers to defeat Hitler, and those like Goerdeler which sought to overthrow the Nazis while working for Germany[14]. For Ritter, Goerdeler was a patriot while the men and women of the Rote Kapelle spy network were traitors[15]. Ritter wrote that those involved in the Rote Kapelle were not part of the "German Resistance, but stood in the service of the enemy abroad", and fully deserved to be executed[16].

Ritter was well known for his asserations denying that there was a uniquely aggressive German version of militarism[17]. For Ritter, militarism was the "one-sided determination of political decisions on the basis of techinal military considerations", and foreign expansionism, and had nothing to do with values of a society[18]. In a paper presented to the German Historical Convention in 1953 entitled "The Problem of Milarism in Germany", Ritter argued traditional Prussian leaders such as Frederick the Great were a Machtpolitiker (power politican), not a militarist since in Ritter's view, Frederick was opposed to the "...the ruthless sacrifice of all life to the purposes of war" and instead was interested in creating "...a lasting order of laws and peace, to further general welfare, and to moderate the conflict of interests"[19]. Ritter maintained that militarism first appeared during the French Revolution, when the revolutionary French state, followed by Napoleon began the total moblization of society to seek "the total destruction of the enemy"[20]. Likewise, Ritter contended that Otto von Bismarck was a Kabinettspolitker (Cabinet politician), not a militarist who ensured that political considerations were always placed ahead of military considerations[21]. Ritter was to expand on these views in a four volume study Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk (translated into English as The Sword and the Scepter) published between 1954-1968, in which Ritter examined the development of militarism in Germany between 1890-1918. In Ritter's view, in the years following Bismarck's sacking in 1890, that saw the first apperance of militarism in Germany. In Volume 2 of Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk, Ritter commented that reviewing the first years of the 20th century was "not without a sense of psychological shock"[22]. Ritter wrote that "the prewar Germany of my own youth, which has for an entire lifetime been illuminated in my memory by the radiant splendor of a sun that seemed to grow dark only after the outbreak of the war of 1914" was "in the evening of my life" darkened by "shadows that were much deeper than my generation-and certainly the generation of my academic teachers-was able to perceive at the time"[23].

For Ritter, it was the radicalizing experience of the First World War that had finally led to the triumph of militarism in Germany, especially after 1916 when Erich Ludendorff established his "silent dictatorship", which in Ritter's view was a huge break with Prussian-German traditions[24]. It was the unhappy results of that war which finally led to the "proletarian nationalism" of the Nazis gaining a mass audience, and led to the "...militarism of the National Socialist mass movement" coming to power[25]. Moreover, Ritter placed great emphasis on the "Hitler factor" as a expanation for Nazi Germany. In 1962, Ritter wrote that he found it "almost unbearable" that the "will of a single madman" had unnecessarily caused World War II[26].

Through many regarded Ritter's work as an apologia for German nationalism and conservatism, Ritter was at times critical of aspects of the German past[27]. Through Ritter commented that many nations had bent their knees in submission to false values, that "the Germans accepted all of that with special ardor when it was now preached to them by National Socialism, and their nationalism had in general displayed from its beginning a particulary intense, combative quality"[28]. At the first meeting of German historians in 1949, Ritter delivered a speech that declared: "We constanly run the risk not only of being condemned by the world as nationalists, but actually being misused as expert witnesses by all those circles and tendencies that, in their impatient and blind nationalism, have shut their ears to the teachings of the most recent past. Never was our political responsibility greater, not only to Germany, but also to Europe and the world. And yet never has our path been so dangerously narrow between Scylla and Charybdis as today"[29].

In his last years, Ritter emerged as the leading critic of the historian Fritz Fischer, who claimed that there were powerful lines of continuity between the Second Reich and the Third Reich and that it was Germany that caused World War I. Ritter fiercely rejected Fischer's arguments that Germany was primarily responsible for the outbreak of war in 1914. Furthermore, Ritter argued there were no lines of continuity between the Second and Third Reichs and considered the Sonderweg view of German history a myth.

In 1953, Ritter found a copy of the "Great Memorandum" relating to German military planing written by General Alfred Graf von Schlieffen in 1905. The following year, Ritter published the “Great Memorandum” together with his observations about the Schlieffen Plan as Der Schlieffen-Plan: Kritik Eines Mythos (The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of An Myth).

In 1959, Ritter was elected an honorary member of the American Historical Association in recognition of what the A.H.A described as Ritter's struggle with totalitarianism. Ritter was the fifth German historian to be so honored by the A.H.A. He died in Freiburg. Ritter was one of the last of the traditional German Idealist historians who saw history as an art, concerned themselves with imaginative identification with their subjects, focused on the great men of the times under the historian's study, and were primarily concerned with political and military events.

[edit] Work

  • Die preussischen Konservativen und Bismarcks deutsche Politik, 1858 bis 1876, 1913.
  • Luther: Gestalt und Symbol, 1925.
  • Stein: eine politische Biographie, 1931.
  • Friedrich der Grosse, 1936.
  • Machstaat und Utopie: vom Streit um die Dämonie der Macht seit Machiavelli und Morus, 1940.
  • Europa und die Deutsche Frage: Betrachtungen über die geschichtliche Eigenart des Deutschen Staatsdenkens, 1948.
  • Die Neugestaltung Deutschlands und Europas im 16. Jahrhundert., 1950
  • Karl Goerdeler und die Deutsche Widerstandsbewegung, 1954.
  • Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk: das Problem des "Militarismus" in Deutschland, 4 volumes, 1954-1968.
  • Der Schlieffenplan: Kritik eines Mythos, 1956.
  • “Eine neue Kriegsschuldthese?” pages 657-668 from Historische Zeitschrift, Volume 194, June 1962, translated into English as “Anti-Fischer: A New War-Guilt Thesis?” pages 135-142 from The Outbreak of World War One: : Causes and Responsibilities, edited by Holger Herwig, Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997.

[edit] Endnotes

  1. ^ Weeks, Gregory "Ritter, Gerhard A." pages 996-998 from The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Volume 2 page 998.
  2. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000 page 7; Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 pages 62-63
  3. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 62.
  4. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 258.
  5. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 63.
  6. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000 page 7
  7. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000 page 7
  8. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 63.
  9. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 63.
  10. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 63.
  11. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 254.
  12. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 258.
  13. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 258.
  14. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 pages 258-259.
  15. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 259.
  16. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 259.
  17. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 254.
  18. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 255.
  19. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 256.
  20. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 page 256.
  21. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 pages 255-256.
  22. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 63.
  23. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 63.
  24. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 pages 255-256.
  25. ^ Iggers, Georg The German Conception of History, Middletown: Connecticut; Wesleyan University Press, 1968 pages 255-257.
  26. ^ Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000 page 7
  27. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 63.
  28. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 63.
  29. ^ Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983 page 64.

[edit] References

  • Dorpalen, Andreas "Gerhard Ritter" from Deutsche Historiker, edited by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973.
  • Dorpalen, Andreas "Historiography as History: The Work of Gerhard Ritter" pages 1-18 from the Journal of Modern History, Volume 34, 1962.
  • Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from The American Historical Review, Volume 88, February 1983.
  • Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold Press, 2000, ISBN 0340 76928 1.
  • Jäckel, Eberhard "Gerhard Ritter, Historiker in seiner Zeit" pages 705-715 from Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Volume 16, 1967.
  • Lehmann, Hartmut & Melton, James Van Horn (editors) Paths of Continuity : Central European Historiography from the 1930s to the 1950s, Washington, D.C. : German Historical Institute ; Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1994 ISBN 0-521-45199-X.
  • Levine, Norman "Gerhard Ritter's Weltanschauung" pages 209-227 from Review of Politics, Volume 30, 1968.
  • Levine, Norman "Ritter, Gerhard" pages 304-306 from Great Historians of the Modern Age edited by Lucian Boia, Westport, C.T.: Greenwood Press, 1991 ISBN 0-313-27328-6.
  • Maehl, William "Gerhard Ritter" from Historians of Modern Europe edited by Hans Schmitt, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971 ISBN 0-8071-0836-7.
  • Weeks, Gregory "Ritter, Gerhard A." pages 996-998 from The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Volume 2, edited by Kelly Boyd, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, London, Chicago, , 1999 ISBN 1-884964-33-8.
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