Carl Ritter
Along with Alexander von Humboldt, he is considered one of the founders of modern geography,[1] as they established it as an independent scientific discipline.
This experience would influence Ritter throughout his life, as he retained an interest in new educational modes, including those of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.
It was arranged that Ritter should become tutor to Hollweg's children, but that in the meantime he should attend the University of Halle at his patron's expense.
[4] He was particularly interested in the exploration of Africa and held constant contacts with British scholars and scientific circles like the Royal Geographical Society.
He was one of the academic teachers of the explorer Heinrich Barth, who traveled in Northern and Western Africa on behalf of the British government to negotiate treaties that were to stop the Trans-Saharan slave trade.
[4] In his view: geography was a kind of physiology and comparative anatomy of the earth: rivers, mountains, glaciers, &c., were so many distinct organs, each with its own appropriate functions; and, as his physical frame is the basis of the man, determinative to a large extent of his life, so the structure of each country is a leading element in the historic progress of the nation.
There is an additional monument at the Mummental school honoring both Ritter and his teacher Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths.
During this time, Ritter wrote and published "Vorhalle der europäischen Völkergeschichte vor Herodotus um den Kaukasus und um die Gestade des Pontus, eine Abhandlung zur Altertumskunde", which marked Ritter's interest in India.
The dynamic of old and new proposed here does not correspond to contemporary notions, rather refers to the evolution of human activity on the planet as Ritter understood it.
August Wilhelm Schlegel, in a letter to Johannes Schulze, bemoans how "It is in fact the high time that the studies of Indian monuments be made serious.
A consequence of his inductive research methods, Ritter was increasingly interested in observing the planet as an organism composed of geographical individuals.
In the introduction of "Geography", he states, "Thus the large continents represent the surveying view of so many more or less separate wholes, which we consider here as the big individuals of the earth in general.
Comparing Geography to language theory or philosophy, he believed that it was necessary to understand each "Erdgegend" (area of the Earth) and its characteristic appearances and natural relationships without relying on the absolute work of pure description and classification.
[9] Format of the Work At the time of his death, Ritter had produced an astonishing amount of geographical literature contained in his "Erdkunde" alone.
Asia Minor (XVIII-XIX) 1850–1852 Ritter's masterwork, the 19-volume Die Erdkunde im Verhältniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen (Geography in Relation to Nature and the History of Mankind), written 1816–1859, developed at prodigious length the theme of the influence of the physical environment on human activity.
Die Erdkunde was left incomplete at the time of Ritter's death, covering only Asia and Africa.
Many of Ritter's writings were printed in the Monatsberichte of the Berlin Geographical Society, and in the Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde.
