Anna Ritter
Encyclopedia
Biography
Ritter was born Anna Nuhn in CoburgCoburg
Coburg is a town located on the Itz River in Bavaria, Germany. Its 2005 population was 42,015. Long one of the Thuringian states of the Wettin line, it joined with Bavaria by popular vote in 1920...
, Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
(then part of the dutchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha or Saxe-Coburg-Gotha served as the collective name of two duchies, Saxe-Coburg and Saxe-Gotha, in Germany. They were located in what today are the states of Bavaria and Thuringia, respectively, and the two were in personal union between 1826 and 1918...
) on February, 23, 1865, but she was only a young child when her father, an export trader, moved the family to New York City. The young Anna returned to Europe in 1869 to attend boarding schools in Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...
and at a Moravian boarding school in the hamlet of Montmirail in the French-speaking canton of Neuchâtel
Canton of Neuchâtel
Neuchâtel is a canton of French speaking western Switzerland. In 2007, its population was 169,782 of which 39,654 were foreigners. The capital is Neuchâtel.-History:...
, Switzerland. She completed her education in Kassel where she married a future civil servant, Rudolf Ritter in 1884.
The couple moved first to Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
and later to Berlin and Münster
Münster
Münster is an independent city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also capital of the local government region Münsterland...
. Her husband died in 1893, and the widow moved to the spa town of Bad Frankenhausen
Bad Frankenhausen
Bad Frankenhausen is a spa town in the German state of Thuringia. It is located at the southern slope of the Kyffhäuser mountain range, on an artificial arm of the Wipper river, a tributary of the Saale. Because of the nearby Kyffhäuser monument dedicated to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, it is...
in Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
. She published her first collection of poetry in 1898 and a second collection followed in 1900. In that same year she found employment with the weekly journal, Die Gartenlaube
Die Gartenlaube
Die Gartenlaube Illustrirtes Familienblatt , was a forerunner of modern magazines, and the first major success of the German weekly. The name means "The Garden Arbor Family Journal" but the magazine is known worldwide as "Die Gartenlaube"...
, which had previously published her poetry. She published a novel, Margharita in 1902 followed by a travel diary. Her most famous poem is "Denkt euch, ich habe das Christkind geseh'n" (I think I saw the Christ Child).
She belonged to a group of writers commissioned by Cologne-based Ludwig Stollwerck chocolate producers to produce literature for a series of collectable print albums and scrapbooks. Other authors included the poet "T. Resa," (Gröhe Theresa), zoologist Paul Matschie, Hans Eschelbach, journalist Julius Rodenburg, writer Joseph von Lauff, poet Carl Hermann Busse
Carl Hermann Busse
Carl Busse was a German lyric poet...
, and the novelist Gustav Falke
Gustav Falke
- Life :Falke was born in Lübeck to merchant Johann Friedrich Christian Falke and his wife Elisabeth Franziska Hoyer. The historians Johannes and Jacob von Falke were his uncles, translator Otto Falke his cousin....
, among others.
Ritter died on October 31, 1921 in Marburg
Marburg
Marburg is a city in the state of Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district and its population, as of March 2010, was 79,911.- Founding and early history :...
.
Ritters style is lyric, and it aligns with lyric styles of several turn of the century German poets – saturated with symbolism and influenced by folklore and a New Romanticism. Composers to set her poems to music include Max Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
, Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
, and Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
, among others.
Principal Works
- Gedichte, Stuttgart (1898), Berlin: Cotta (27-29 printing) 1911.
- Befreiung: Neue Gedichte, Stuttgart: Cotta (fourth printing) 1900.