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Rh of Jesus Christ revealed to the community. That God is love and that the purpose of His love is the moral organization of humanity in the &ldquo;Kingdom of God&rdquo; &mdash; this idea, with its immense range of application &mdash; is applied in Ritschl's initial datum.

RITSCHL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1806-1876), German scholar, was born in 1806 in Thuringia. His family, in which culture and poverty were hereditary, were Protestants who had migrated several generations earlier from Bohemia. Ritschl was fortunate in his school training, at a time when the great reform in the higher schools of Prussia had not yet been thoroughly carried out. His chief teacher, Spitzner, a pupil of Gottfried Hermann, divined the boy's genius and allowed it free growth, applying only so much either of stimulus or of restraint as was absolutely needful. After a wasted year at the university of Leipzig, where Hermann stood at the zenith of his fame, Ritschl passed in 1826 to Halle. Here he came under the powerful influence of Reisig, a young &ldquo;Hermannianer&rdquo; with exceptional talent, a fascinating personality and a rare gift for instilling into his pupils his own ardour for classical study. The great controversy between the &ldquo;Realists&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Verbalists&rdquo; was then at its height, and Ritschl naturally sided with Hermann against Boeckh. The early death of Reisig in 1828 did not sever Ritschl from Halle, where he began his professorial career with a great reputation and brilliant success, but soon hearers fell away, and the pinch of poverty compelled his removal to Breslau, where he reached the rank of &ldquo;ordinary&rdquo; professor in 1834, and held other offices. The great event of Ritschl's life was a sojourn of nearly a year in Italy (1836-37), spent in libraries and museums, and more particularly in the laborious examination of the Ambrosian palimpsest of Plautus at Milan. The remainder of his life was largely occupied in working out the material then gathered and the ideas then conceived. Bonn, whither he removed on his marriage in 1839, and where he remained for twenty-six years, was the great scene of his activity both as scholar and as teacher. The philological seminary which he controlled, although nominally only joint-director with Welcker, became a veritable officina litterarum, a kind of Isocratean school of classical study; in it were trained many of the foremost scholars of the last forty years. The names of Georg Curtius, Ihne, Schleicher, Bernays, Ribbeck, Lorenz, Vahlen, Hübner, Bücheler, Helbig, Benndorf, Riese, Windisch, who were his pupils either at Bonn or at Leipzig, attest his fame and power as a teacher. In 1854 Otto Jahn took the place of the venerable Welcker at Bonn, and after a time succeeded in dividing with Ritschl the empire over the philological school there. The two had been friends, but after gradual estrangement a violent dispute arose between them in 1865, which for many months divided into two hostile forces the universities and the press of Germany. Both sides were steeped in fault, but Ritschl undoubtedly received harsh treatment from the Prussian government, and pressed his resignation. He accepted a call to Leipzig, where he died in harness in 1876.

Ritschl's character was strongly marked. The spirited element in him was powerful, and to some at times he seemed overbearing, but his nature was noble at the core; and, though intolerant of inefficiency and stupidity, he never asserted his personal claims in any mean or petty way. He was warmly attached to family and friends, and yearned continually after sympathy, yet he established real intimacy with only a few. He had a great faculty for organization, as is shown by his