Gerhard Ritter

Gerhard Ritter

Gerhard Georg Bernhard Ritter (6 April 1888 in Bad Sooden-Allendorf – 1 July 1967 in Freiburg) was a conservative German historian. He studied under professor Hermann Oncken. A Lutheran, he first became well known for his 1925 biography of Martin Luther. He was a life-long apologist for the pre-World War I authoritarian rule of the aristocracy under the German Empire. Under the Nazis his books articulated positions contrary to the regime; he was arrested in 1944. Following World War II, Professor Ritter worked to restore German conservatism by clearly distinguishing it from Nazi evils. At the end of his career, he argued against theories of the German historian Fritz Fischer.