Ritter, C.

M. Doevenspeck, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

& 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

published the second volume of his Geography of Europe, a

Glossary work which is not very well known today, but which went
Erdkunde It is the science of Earth, a literal German far beyond the then conventional compendium geo-
translation for the word geography. graphy. In 1813 Ritter accompanied his students to
Comparative Geography It pursues the goal of a Göttingen, where he lived for 6 years. He studied
geographical typology by a generalizing and geography, history, philosophy, botany, chemistry, and
comparative search for laws. mineralogy and worked on an introduction and the first
Compendium Geography The prescientific stage of two volumes of his major work Die Erdkunde, (literally,
geography lasting until the early 1800s, a mere ‘Earth science’) which were published in 1817 and 1818.
description and summary of facts. After several months as a grammar-school teacher in
Geographical Providential Device Transfer of the Frankfurt, he became a professor of history at the
idea of providence in geography, for example, Friedrich-Wilhelms University, and then the first chair of
interpretation of relief molding as God’s plan. geography in Germany at the military academy in Berlin
Inductive Reasoning Moving from specific in 1820. He stayed for nearly 40 years in Berlin teaching
observations to broader generalizations and theories. geography and establishing the Berlin Geographical So-
ciety as one of the leading geographical associations at
that time. Through his students, such as Elisée Reclus,
the important French geographer and professor of com-
parative geography in Brussels, Arnauld Guyot, who
Ritter, Carl (1779–1859) became professor of physical geography and geology at
Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and his
The German geographer Carl Ritter (Figure 1) was born
in Quedlinburg (then Prussia). As one of six children
whose father died when he was 2 years old, Ritter enjoyed
an unorthodox education by his teachers who tried to
practice new teaching methods based on the educational
ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and inspired by the En-
lightenment: being responsive to the nature of children
instead of learning by rote and searching a God in nature
instead of being paralyzed by church doctrines. Since his
religious mother had a great influence on him, education
and Christianity remained decisive for Ritter and his
work.
On finishing school, with financial support from the
banker Bethmann-Hollweg, Ritter attended university
in Halle where he studied under inter alia Matthias
Christian Sprengel, a specialist on India and an early
critic of colonialism and slavery. In return for this sup-
port Ritter worked as tutor in Bethmann-Hollweg’s house
in Frankfurt until 1813 using his own teaching materials.
These indicate his place as the leading teacher in geog-
raphy of his time: they included thematic maps, relief
models, and the interpretations of his data. During this
time Ritter made several journeys to Switzerland and
Italy where he conducted barometer, thermometer,
and hygrometer measurements as well as completed
panoramic drawings. He also met the Swiss educational
reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi several times, who Figure 1 Carl Ritter, a painting by Carl Begas, 1844. Reprinted
was to have a great influence on his work. In 1807, the from Staatsbibliothek PreuXischer Kulturbesitz (ed.) (1979). Carl
year he met von Humboldt for the first time, Ritter Ritter in Seiner Zeit. Ausstellungskataloge 11. Berlin.

412
 Ritter, C. 413

admirers, such as Paul Vidal de La Blache and Peter even more comprehensive than Réclus’ Nouvelle Géo-
Kropotkin, he strongly influenced geography in France, graphie Universelle. But if one dares to evaluate this work
Russia, and North America. especially in respect of its claim to follow a comparative
Since Ritter was highly religious; he may be described approach, it is important to note that it remained frag-
as a Christian geographer. For him, nature was divinely mentary. Of the originally intended three parts that were
arranged by God and as part of this arrangement, the outlined in a never-published handbook, only the first,
Earth was the setting of divine revelation, created by God with the object of dealing with the continents (‘the solid
as the home of man. Against the prevailing secularized form or the continents’) was published. Nonetheless, this
zeitgeist, Ritter appears as one of the last to hold on to ran to some 19 volumes with over 20 000 pages between
ideas of divine providence. Even if his religiosity influ- 1817 and 1859, and even that part covers only Africa and
enced his scholarship, it did not bar anarchists like Réclus Asia. Ritter also never finished the second part on hy-
or Kropotkin from following him in his conception of drography, meteorology, and volcanology (‘the liquid
geography. Ritter attached great importance to teaching a form or the elements’), and the third on mineralogy,
‘new scientific geography’ that distances itself from botany, and zoology (‘the bodies of the three empires of
the traditional summation of facts about states and cities. nature’). What is particularly evident here is that man-
In contrast to the simple description and inventory of kind was not to be treated especially but was regarded as
the objects on Earth’s surface, he tried to understand the a ‘vital mirror of nature’ – the guiding idea of all three
interdependencies between these objects and, even if parts.
he formulated very few laws himself, he promoted in- Like his contemporary von Humboldt, Ritter is thus
ductive reasoning. Like von Humboldt, he recognized the acknowledged as one of the discipline’s founding fathers,
complexity of nature and the interconnections and with his comparative approach and attempt to create
interrelations in it, but differed from von Humboldt by geography as an integrative science having legacies which
looking at the same place in different historical episodes still continue to unfold.
rather than comparing different places at the same time.
The consideration of history was an important leitmotiv See also: Christian Geography; German-Language
for Ritter. After his early classification of physical and Geography; Kropotkin, P.; National Schools of
economic geography in 1806, he came to the conviction Geography; Reclus, E.; Vidal de la Blache, P.; von
that analyzing the Earth’s inhabitants means to consider Humboldt, A.
their particular history. Subsequently, the strong tie to
economics no longer satisfied him and he favored the
Further Reading
term historic in order to emphasize geography’s link to
man, who stood in the center of his studies. For Ritter, the Beck, H. (1979). Carl Ritter, Genius of Geography: On His Life and
Earth’s surface was therefore best conceived of as a dy- Work. Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Inter Nationes.
namic sequence of historical–geographical layers. Beck, H. (1982). GroXe Geographen. Pioniere-AuXenseiter-Gelehrte.
Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
Ritter worked on many of the geographical subjects Lenz, K. (ed.) (1979). Carl Ritter – Geltung und Deutung. Beiträge
that still matter today, including, for example, migration des Symposiums anlässlich der Wiederkehr des 200. Geburtstages
models and research on large conurbations (e.g., Jeru- von Carl Ritter, November 1979 in Berlin (West). Berlin: Dietrich
Reimer.
salem) and river catchments, always accompanied by an Martin, G. J. (2005). All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical
impressive cartography. Ritter’s regional approach was Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
picked up in the early 1900s by the American geographer, Plewe, E. (1978). Die Carl Ritter Bibliothek. Erdkundliches Wissen 50.
Wiesbaden: Steiner.
Richard Hartshorne, who refined the method and named Richter, H. (ed.) (1983). Carl Ritter. Werk und Wirkungen. Beiträge eines
it ‘areal differentiation’. Between 1824 and 1852, Ritter Symposiums im 200. Geburtsjahr des Gelehrten, Quedlinburg, DDR.
traveled all over Europe; but, unlike von Humboldt, he Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft
der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik 16. Gotha: VEB Hermann
did not leave the continent, relying instead on reports Haack.
from European discoverers, researchers, missionaries, and Ritter, C. (1822). Die Erdkunde im Verhältnis zur Natur und zur
merchants. He also used the available Arabic, Asiatic, and Geschichte des Menschen oder allgemeine vergleichende
Geographie als sichere Grundlage des Studiums und Unterrichts in
Chinese literature. physikalischen und historischen Wissenschaften. Erster Theil, Erstes
The full title of his main work Die Erdkunde reads The Buch. Afrika. Berlin: Reimer.
Science of the Earth in Relation to Nature and the History of Ritter, C. (1883). Geographical Studies. Boston, MA: Gould and
Lincoln.
Mankind; or, General Comparative Geography as the Solid Ritter, C. (2007). Comparative Geography. Montana: Kessinger
Foundation of the Study of, and Instruction in, the Physical and Publishing.
Historical Sciences. It again reveals the importance Ritter Schmitthenner, H. (1951). Studien Über Carl Ritter. Frankfurter
Geographische Hefte 4. Frankfurt: Dr. Waldemar Kramer.
gave to history. To this day, Die Erdkunde is the largest Staatsbibliothek PreuXischer Kulturbesitz (ed.) (1979). Carl Ritter in
work of a single author in geographical literature and Seiner Zeit. Ausstellungskataloge 11. Berlin.