Ritter, Carl (1779-1859)

German geographer

Along with his countryman and mentor Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), Carl Ritter is recognized as one of the two founders of modern geography.

Ritter was born the son of a physician on August 7, 1779, in Quedlinburg, Germany. After his father's premature death in 1784, his mother enrolled him at the age of five in Schnepfenthal, the experimental school of Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744–1811), where he acquired an amazing breadth of basic education. Based on the humanistic pedagogical theories of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Salzmann's system emphasized empirical science, practical living, natural law, history, philosophy, theology, art, and modern languages, but not classical languages. His geography teacher was Johann Christoph Friedrich Guts Muths (1759–1839), who also taught history and French. Upon completing this curriculum, Ritter was hired as private tutor for the children of Bethmann Hollweg, a wealthy banker in Frankfurt. From 1798 to 1814, he worked for Hollweg, who financed his university education, first at Frankfurt, then at Göttingen from 1813 to 1819. During this time he also taught himself Latin and Greek.

Ritter's first geographical publication appeared in 1804. By 1816, he was a well-established scholar, with many articles and a two-volume textbook of European geography. He had traveled throughout Europe, but not beyond it. On the strength of his excellent reputation, he became professor of history at the University of Frankfurt in 1819 then in 1820 professor of geography at the University of Berlin, holding Germany's first endowed professorship of geography. He spent the rest of his career there, enjoying honors as a popular lecturer and prolific writer. Among his students at Berlin was the geologist Arnold Henri Guyot (1807–1884). While in Berlin, he also taught at a military academy and, in 1828, co-founded the Berlin Geographical Society. He died in Berlin on September 28, 1859.

A child of the Enlightenment, Ritter developed a strong affinity for the progressive ideas of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827), German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), and Humboldt. He integrated the studies of history and geography, perhaps sometimes to the disadvantage of traditional physical geography. He envisioned his life's work as a comprehensive geographical treatise of the entire world. With a long title but commonly known as simply Erdkunde (Geography), the first volume appeared in 1817. Eventually it ran to nineteen volumes, but when Ritter died it was still incomplete, covering only Asia and Africa. Immediately successful, it defined the discipline of geography as the study of the relation between humans and their various environments throughout the world. The human aspect of the study was Ritter's innovation, based on Guts Muths's principles. Geography was no longer "just maps."

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