Carl Ritter - German Founder of Modern Geography

Carl Ritter - German Founder of Modern Geography German geographer Carl Ritter is commonly associated with Alexander von Humboldt as one of the founders of modern geography. However, most acknowledge Ritters contributions to the modern discipline to be somewhat less significant than those of von Humboldt, especially as Ritters life-work was based on the observations of others. Childhood and Education Ritter was born on August 7, 1779, in Quedlinburg, Germany (then Prussia), ten years after von Humboldt. At the age of five, Ritter was fortunate to have been chosen as a guinea pig to attend a new experimental school which brought him into contact with some of the greatest thinkers of the period. In his early years, he was tutored by the geographer J.C.F. GutsMuths and learned the relationship between people and their environment. At the age of sixteen, Ritter was able to attend a university by receiving tuition in exchange for tutoring a wealthy bankers sons. Ritter became a geographer by learning to observe the world around him; he also became an expert at sketching landscapes. He learned Greek and Latin so that he could read more about the world. His travels and direct observations were limited to Europe, he was not the world traveler that von Humboldt was. Career In 1804, at the age of 25, Ritters first geographical writings, about the geography of Europe, were published. In 1811 he published a two-volume textbook about the geography of Europe. From 1813 to 1816 Ritter studied geography, history, pedagogy, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, and botany at the University of Gottingen. In 1817, he published the first volume of his major work, Die Erdkunde, or Earth Science (the literal German translation for the word geography.) Intended to be a complete geography of the world, Ritter published 19 volumes, consisting of over 20,000 pages, over the course of his life. Ritter often included theology in his writings for he described that the earth displayed evidence of Gods plan. Unfortunately, he was only able to write about Asia and Africa before he died in 1859 (the same year as von Humboldt). The full, and lengthy, title of Die Erdkunde is translated to The Science of the Earth in Relation to Nature and the History of Mankind; or, General Comparative Geography as the Solid Foundation of the Study of, and Instruction in, the Physical and Historical Sciences. In 1819 Ritter became a professor of history at the University of Frankfurt. The following year, he was appointed to be the first chair of geography in Germany - at the University of Berlin. Though his writings were often obscure and difficult to understand, his lectures were very interesting and quite popular. The halls where he gave lectures were almost always full. While he held many other simultaneous positions throughout his life, such as founding  the Berlin Geographical Society, he continued to work and lecture at the University of Berlin until his death on September 28, 1859, in that city. One of Ritters most famous students and ardent supporters was Arnold Guyot, who became a professor of physical geography and geology at Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) from 1854 to 1880.