Friedrich Ratzel

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Friedrich Ratzel's photograph from the University of Leipzig]

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

Life

Ratzel's father was the head of the household staff of the Grand Duke of Baden. He 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 a further 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 became a student of zoology at the universities of Heidelberg, Jena and Berlin, finishing in 1868. He studied zoology in 1869, publishing "Sein und Werden der organischen Welt" on Darwin.

After the completion of his schooling, Ratzel began a period of travels that see him transform from zoologist/biologist to geographer. He began field work in the Mediterranean, writing letters of his experiences. These letters led to a job as a traveling reporter for the "Kölnische Zeitung" ("Cologne Journal"), which provided him the means for further travel. Ratzel embarked on several expeditions, the lengthiest and most important being his 1874-1875 trip to North America, Cuba, and Mexico. This trip was a turning point in Ratzel’s career. He studied the influence of people of German origin in America, especially in the Midwest, as well as other ethnic groups in North America.

He produced a written work of his account in 1876, "Städte-und Kulturbilder aus Nordamerika" (Profile of Cities and Cultures in North America), 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, Richmond, Charleston, New Orleans, and San Francisco.

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, then rose to full professor in 1880. While at Munich, Ratzel produced several books and established his career as an academic. In 1886, he accepted an appointment at Leipzig. His lectures were widely attended, notably by the influential American geographer Ellen Churchill Semple.

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

Ratzel continued his work at Leipzig until his sudden death on August 9, 1904 in Ammerland, Germany.

Writings

Influenced by thinkers like Darwin and zoologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, he published several papers. Among them is the essay "Lebensraum" (1901) concerning biogeography, creating a foundation for the uniquely German variant of geopolitics: "geopolitik".

Ratzel’s writings coincided with the growth of German industrialism after the Franco-Prussian war and the subsequent search for markets that brought it into competition with England. His writings served as welcome justification for imperial expansion. Influenced by the American geostrategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, Ratzel wrote of aspirations for German naval reach, agreeing that sea power was self-sustaining, as the profit from trade would pay for the merchant marine, unlike land power.

Ratzel’s key contribution to "geopolitik" was the expansion on the biological conception of geography, without a static conception of borders. States are instead organic and growing, with borders representing only a temporary stop in their movement. It is not the state proper that is the organism, but the land in its spiritual bond with the people who draw sustenance from it. The expanse of a state’s borders is a reflection of the health of the nation.

Ratzel’s idea of "Raum" (space) would grow out of his organic state conception. This early concept of "lebensraum" was not political or economic, but spiritual and racial nationalist expansion. The "Raum-motiv" is a historically driving force, pushing peoples with great "Kultur" to naturally expand. Space, for Ratzel, was a vague concept, theoretically unbounded. "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's concept of "raum" was not overtly aggressive, but theorized simply as the natural expansion of strong states into areas controlled by weaker states.

Influence

Rudolf Kjellén was Ratzel’s Swedish student who would further elaborate on organic state theory and who coined the term “geopolitics”.

The German geostrategist General Karl Haushofer was exposed to Ratzel, who was friends with Haushofer’s father, and would integrate Ratzel’s ideas on the division between sea and land powers into his theories, saying that only a country with both could overcome this conflict. In his writings, Haushofer also adopted the view that borders are largely insignificant, especially as the nation ought to be in a frequent state of struggle with those around it. Further, Haushofer would adopt Ratzel's conception of "Raum" as the central program for German "geopolitik".

Quotes

"A philosophy of the history of the human race, worthy of its name, must begin with the heavens and descend to the earth, must be charged with the conviction that all existence is one—a single conception sustained from beginning to end upon one identical law."

Further reading

*Dorpalen, Andreas. "The World of General Haushofer." Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., New York: 1984.
*Martin, Geoffrey J. and Preston E. James. "All Possible Worlds." New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc: 1993.
*Mattern, Johannes. "Geopolitik: Doctrine of National Self-Sufficiency and Empire." The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore: 1942.
*Wanklyn, Harriet. "Friedrich Ratzel, a Biographical Memoir and Bibliography." Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1961.

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