Friedrich Ratzel

Friedrich Ratzel's photograph from the University of Leipzig

Friedrich Ratzel (born August 30, 1844 in Karlsruhe, Germany – died August 9, 1904 in Ammerland, Germany) was a German geographer and ethnographer, notable for coining the term Lebensraum - "living space".

Life

Friedrich Ratzel was born into an important family. His father was the head of the household staff of the Grand Duke of Baden, a position highly regarded in that time. Ratzel attended high school in Karlsruhe for six years before being apprenticed at age 15 to apothecaries. In 1863, he went to Rapperswil on the Lake of Zurich, Switzerland, where he began to study the classics. After an additional year as an apothecary at Mörs near Krefeld in the Ruhr area (1865-1866), he spent a short time at the high school in Karlsruhe and later became a student of zoology at the universities of Heidelberg, Jena and Berlin. He received his Ph.D. in 1868, and the following year published his first work - Sein und Werden der organischen Welt, a commentary on Charles Darwin and his ideas.

After the completion of his schooling, Ratzel started to travel, an experience that transformed him from zoologist/biologist to geographer. He began fieldwork in the Mediterranean, writing letters of his experiences. These letters led to a job as a traveling reporter for the Kölnishe Zeitung newspapers, which provided him the means for further travel. His career was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. Ratzel joined the army, and traveled through Hungary and over the Carpathians, where he saw villages with German people living in a foreign land. This experience started his interest for human geography and influenced his later work. After the war, Ratzel embarked on several expeditions, the lengthiest and most important being his 1874-1875 trip to North America, Cuba, and Mexico. He studied the influence of people of German origin in United States, especially in the Midwest, as well as other ethnic groups in North America.

He produced a written work of his account in 1876, Stadte-ünd Culturbilder aus Nordamerika, which would help establish the field of cultural geography. According to Ratzel, cities are the best place to study people because life is "blended, compressed, and accelerated" in cities, and they bring out the "greatest, best, most typical aspects of people". Ratzel had traveled to cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C, New Orleans, and San Francisco, to conduct his research.

Upon his return in 1875, Ratzel became a lecturer in geography at the Technical High School in Munich. In 1876, he was promoted to assistant professor, which rose to a full professorship in 1880. While at Munich, Ratzel produced several books and established his career as an academic. In 1886, he accepted an appointment at the University of Leipzig. His lectures were widely attended, notably by the influential American geographer Ellen Churchill Semple.

Ratzel produced the foundations of human geography in his three-volume Anthropogeographie, from 1882 to 1891. This work was misinterpreted by many of his students, creating a number of environmental determinists. He published his work on political geography, Politische Geography, in 1897. It was in this work that Ratzel introduced concepts that contributed to Lebensraum and later to Social Darwinism.

Ratzel continued his work at Leipzig until his sudden death on August 9, 1904, while on holidays with his wife and daughters in Ammerland, Germany.

Work

Influenced by thinkers like Darwin and zoologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, Ratzel wrote on the variety of topics, ranging from zoology and biology to geography, cultural geography, and geostrategy. His famous essay Lebensraum (1901), for example, dealt with the topic of biogeography. Through his writings Ratzel created a foundation for the uniquely German variant of geopolitics – geopolitik.

Ratzel’s key contribution to geopolitik was the implication on the biological concept of growth and development to geography. So far, states with their borders were considered static, bound to certain geographic location. States however, according to Ratzel, are organic and growing, with borders representing only a temporary stop in their movement. Just like a biological organism grows and develops, it is not natural for the states to be static. The expanse of a state’s borders is a reflection of the health of the nation.

Ratzel’s idea of Raum (space) would grow from his organic state conception. His early concept of lebensraum was not about political or economic, but rather spiritual and racial, nationalist expansion. The Raum-motiv is a historical driving force, pushing peoples with great Kultur to naturally expand. Space, for Ratzel, was a vague concept, theoretically unbounded just as later was Hitler’s. Raum was defined by where German peoples live, where other weaker states could serve to support German peoples economically, and where German culture could fertilize other cultures. However, it ought to be noted that Ratzel did not use his concept of raum in an aggressive manner, but he simply theorized about the natural expansion of strong states into areas controlled by weaker states.

Ratzel’s writings coincided with the development of the Second Industrial Revolution, after the Franco-Prussian war, and the subsequent search for markets, that brought Germany into competition with England. Influenced by the American geostrategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, Ratzel wrote of aspirations for German naval reach, arguing that sea power, unlike land power, was self-sustaining, as the profit from international trade would pay for the merchant marines. Ratzel writings became wide welcomed, especially as a justification for German imperial expansion.

Legacy

Ratzel's writings, especially his concept of Lebenstraum, was used in the development of Social Darwinism.

Ratzel influenced numerous scholars in the area of geopolitics. German geostrategist, general Karl Haushofer, integrated Ratzel’s ideas on the division between sea and land powers into his own theories, adopting the view that borders are largely insignificant, especially as the nation ought to be in a frequent state of struggle with those around it.

Rudolf Kjellén was a famous Ratzel’s Swedish student who further elaborated on organic state theory and who coined the term “geopolitics”. Kjellen’s interpretation of Ratzel was very popular among Nazis, and was used as a justification for German expansionistic politics leading to WWII.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Dorpalen, Andreas. 1942. The World of General Haushofer. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.

• Martin, Geoffrey J. and Preston E. James. 1993. All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. ISBN 047163414X

• Mattern, Johannes. 1942. Geopolitik: Doctrine of National Self-Sufficiency and Empire. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. ISBN 0404612938

• Wanklyn, Harriet. 1961. Friedrich Ratzel, a Biographical Memoir and Bibliography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521067324

Bibliography

• Ratzel, Friedrich. 1869. Sein und Werden der Organischen Welt.

• Ratzel, Friedrich. 1876. Städte- und Culturbilder aus Nordamerika. Leipzig, F.A. Brockhaus

• Ratzel, Friedrich. 1882-1891. Anthropogeographie (3 vols.). Stuttgart: J. Engelhorn

• Ratzel, Friedrich. 1897. Studies in Political Areas II: Intellectual, Political, and Economic Effects of Large Areas. The American Journal of Sociology, 3, 4, 449-463 (translated by Ellen C. Semple).

• Ratzel, Friedrich. 1901. Der Lebensraum: Eine Biogeographische Studie

• Ratzel, Friedrich. 1902. Die Erde und das Leben: Eine Vergleichende Erdkunde (2 vols.)

• Ratzel, Friedrich. 1988. Géographie politique. Translated by Pierre Rusch, Geneva, Éditions régionales européennes (first edition: 1897 - Politische Geographie. Munich et Leipzig, Verlag von R. Oldenbourg).

• Ratzel, Friedrich. 1988. Sketches of Urban and Cultural Life in North America. Translated by Stewart A. Stehlin, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press (first edition: 1876).

External Links

• Guy Mercier. (1995). Geography of Friedrich Ratzel and Paul Vidal de la Blache: A Comparative Analysis. Annales de géographie, 583, 211-235.

• Britannica Online – Short biography

• Hilderbrand, Dawn M. & Janke, Jason. 1996. Friedrich Ratzel: German Geographer. History and Philosophy of Geography.

• Idea of Lebensraum - Application of Ratzel’s idea by German imperialists and Nazis

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