Carl Ritter: biography and contributions of this German geographer

Carl Ritter was a German geographer, considered to be one of the main founders of modern geography along with Alexander von Humboldt. Thanks to them geography was recognized as a science, being taught as an academic subject in universities.

For Ritter, geography allowed us to know the interrelationships between living beings and the physical environment in which they inhabit, placing a greater emphasis on observation in historical processes and in the life of human beings in different physical environments than in the mere observation of physical phenomena in the environment in isolation.

In this biography of Carl Ritter we will review his life and to his main contributions to the field of Geography.

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Brief biography of Carl Ritter

Karl or Carl Ritter He was born in Quendlinburg (Germany) on August 7, 1779, into a wealthy family. His father, F. W. Ritter, was a prestigious doctor who died when Carl was only 2 years old, leaving his widowed wife and in charge of 6 children, so the family went through a very hard stage.

Youth and years of academic training

From his early years at school, Carl Ritter was always known for being a diligent student with a great interest in learning.

A well-known pedagogue named Christian G. Salzmann, founded the Schnepfenthal, a school specializing in studies of the natural sciences. He awarded a scholarship to Carl Ritter and one of his brothers, Johannes, tutoring Guths Muths, a teacher German who has become famous for his important role in the development of physical education as a subject school.

At Schnepfenthal he studied for 11 years, and this period left an imprint on him for the rest of his life. After his studies there, he retained a predilection for new teaching methods, including those of the German philosopher and theologian Johan Heinrich Pestalozzi. This was reflected in the fact that most of Ritter's writing is based on the three stages of teaching designed by Pestalozzi (acquisition, comparison and establishment of a general system).

On the other hand, Ritter was also a follower of the educational foundations of the German theologian Johann Gottfried von Herder about the relationship between the human being and his environment.

At the end of his training at the Schnepfenthal in 1878, Ritter met Bethmann Hollweg, a banker from the city of Frankfurt, with whom he reached the pact to be in charge of being the guardian of his children. In turn, Hollwerg paid for Ritter's studies at the University of Halle.

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Main years of his professional career as a researcher

Carl Ritter He had a long and brilliant professional career that he developed mainly as a professor of Geography at the university and with his work as a researcher and disseminator on the geography of the different continents.

Even after graduating from the University of Halle, Carl Ritter continued as Hollweg's children's tutor, becoming so over 15 years, during who accompanied the family on their travels throughout Europe (Savoy, France, Italy, Switzerland, etc.) at the same time that he was in charge of the education and care of the children. sons.

In 1814, Ritter went to live in Göttingen, where he began to devote himself to the study of geography exhaustively. and, during his years in that German city, he fell in love with Lili Kramer, a woman born in Duderstadt, with whom he would eventually marry.

In 1819, Ritter began working as a history teacher at the Frankfurt City Lyceum, a school of education where he only stayed for one year teaching.

Shortly after, In 1820, he got the first chair of geography at the University of Berlin, which he would keep until his death in 1859. He in turn began to teach at the Military School of the city.

However, even though he had a lot of work, he never stopped traveling during that time. So he continued to visit several countries in Europe, which helped him to collect very valuable information to carry out various written works on geography.

Subsequently, He went on to found the Berlin Society for Geography and Comparative Geography together with his colleague Humboldt, which triggered the validation of geography as a scientific subject that allowed the study and presentation of a series of relationships between the environment and the living beings that inhabit it.

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Works and contributions to science by Carl Ritter

Among the contributions of Carl Ritter to science and especially to geography, it is worth highlighting his most important work, entitled "Die Erdkunde im Verhältniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen" ("Earth sciences in relation to nature and the history of man"), where he explains the impact that the environment has on the activities of human beings, with the aim of exposing the influence of the climate of a country on the longevity of the people who live in it, among other factors related.

This work was never finished; however, he went on to write more than 20,000 pages, grouped into 19 volumes, which he developed from 1817 to his last days. The first volume focuses on the geography of Africa, whose work was recognized to such an extent that it allowed him to secure a teaching position at the University of Berlin. In 1822 he published a revised edition of this first volume. Between the years 1832 and 1859, the year of his death, he devoted himself to publishing new volumes of his work focused primarily on the geography of Asia.

Other very important works, which should be noted, are the following: between 1804 and 1807, he wrote his first works related to the geography of Europe; in 1820, he published "Die Vorhalle europaeischer Voelkergeschichte von Herodot"; finally, in 1838, “Die Stupas, oder die architektonischen Denkmale an der indobaktrischen Königstrasse un die kolosse von Bamyan”.

A differential aspect between Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter is that von Humboldt was a great explorer of new geographical territories, while Ritter was more of a geography scholar than an explorer, so he had extensive knowledge of the subject.. For this reason, Ritter is often recognized more as a historian of world geography than as a explorer geographer and it is that he dedicated much of his work to geographical interpretation throughout the History.

That is why, after his death, he received criticism from some geographers who considered that in his work geography was interpreted as a secondary element to history.

Although there were some differences between the methods used by von Humboldt and Ritter, it should be noted that thanks to the work of both, geography was consolidated as a modern science and, in addition, Ritter, who is 10 years younger, always He considered von Humboldt as his teacher and that is why much of his works on geography follow the guidelines of the ideas of von Humboldt.

In some sources Carl Ritter is considered the discoverer of the ultraviolet rays that form part of the energy coming from the sun, reaching the Earth in the form of two groups of rays: the UVA and the UVB. However, there is a greater consensus that the discoverer of ultraviolet rays was the German physicist and chemist Johann Wilhelm Ritter in 1801. Since they have the same last name, it is understandable that this has led to confusion about the authorship of this discovery.

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Acknowledgments to this geographer

In the German cities of Leipzig and Berlin there are two foundations that were created in honor of Carl Ritter, which show the great importance of his contributions to geography and in them its members are in charge of continuing the work of developing and consolidating research and studies geographic.

In Quendlinburg, the town where Ritter was born, a memorial was built in 1864 in his memory.

In addition, on the moon there is a crater that has been baptized with the surname of Carl Ritter, as a way of recognizing his great scientific contributions.