Karl Ritter

Karl Ritter was born on November 7, 1888 in Würzburg, Bavaria, Germany.

Ritter was a committed National Socialist. His wife's father was distantly related to Richard Wagner; he came into contact with Hitler through this connection and joined the party in the mid-1920s.

As an early member of the NSDAP since 1925 he also shot several propaganda movies.

After WWI he studied architecture, worked as a graphic artist and then entered the film industry in 1926 as a public relations manager at Südfilm, where he edited a book of Disney cartoons.

He came in touch with the film business as a commercial illustrator and only few years later he already wrote his first screenplays for movies like "Das Spreewaldmädel" (1928), "Kehre zurück! Alles vergeben!" (1929) and "Fräulein Lausbub" (1930).

Karl Ritter took over the responsibility of a producer from 1933, among them for the productions "Hitlerjunge Quex" (1933), "Stukas" (1941), "Besatzung Dora" (1943) and "Sommernächte" (1944).

John Altmann estimated that 6 million young boys had seen and been influenced by his films between 1936 and 1939. His Zeitfilme such as Stukas have been provocatively seen as forerunners of modern military thrillers such as Roland Emmerich's 1996 Independence Day.

He was a producer and director, known for Patriots (1937), Furlough on Parole (1938) and Pour le Mérite (1938).

When events overtook them, one of his films, Kadetten (completed 1939, released 1941) had to be shelved for two years and three either had to be abandoned or could not be released: Legion Condor when the war began, Besatzung Dora when the promise of land in the East for German settlers became hollow (and when the German forces had to withdraw from North Africa, a major setting of the film), and Narvik when the project was opposed by the military and then transferred to Veit Harlan.

Goebbels wrote that Ritter "makes nationalistic points with a lack of inhibition that would make others blush" but also noted his heavy touch, writing of Bal paré (1940): "Ritter is not suited to subtle psychological portrayal. He is more for hearty things." As a result, he is not highly regarded today.

The Soviet Union demanded in 1945 that he be tried for war crimes because of his propaganda and militarist pictures.

After the end of World War II, Ritter was declared a Mitläufer (fellow traveler) at his de-Nazification trial. In 1947, he emigrated to Argentina via Portugal; there, thanks to Winifred Wagner ( the English-born wife of Siegfried Wagner, the son of Richard Wagner), he was able to make El Paraiso. In the 1950s he returned to West Germany and ran his own production company there, declaring a wish "to restore the strength of the German cinema", but his project of remaking Pandora's Box fell through, and he went back to Argentina and died in 1977 in Buenos Aires.

David Stewart Hull, in his 1969 overview of Nazi films, characterized Ritter's work as "heavy-handed and extremely talky", described Pour le Mérite as "a crushing bore" and Stukas as "having all his worst vices: blatant propaganda, slapdash production values, crude editing, and a terrible script", while paying GPU the compliment that: "The technical work is less slap-dash than usual and the acting considerably above Ritter's usual low level.".

Karsten Witte summed him up in his overview, first published in 1993, as someone who "directed bad action films on a conveyor belt".