Eugène Ricklin

Doctor Eugène Ricklin (1862 – 4 September 1935) was an Alsatian politician.

Eugène Ricklin was born in Dannemarie (German: Dammerkirch) from a sundgauvian hotelier father and an Alsatian mother, Catherine Kayser. After his secondary education in Belfort, he attended the gymnasia of Altkirch and Colmar. He then went to Germany east of the Rhine, to Regensburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Munich and Erlangen where he studied medicine.

From a young age, he showed a great interest in justice and defence of the common man, and was already noticed at 29 years old when it was suggested to him he might join the municipal council of his home town. At the age of 34, he succeeded Flury, and became mayor of Dannemarie in 1898.

He was relieved of his duties as mayor in 1902 following a complaint about an insult to the Kaiser and as a sanction for having claimed the status of Bundesstaat (federal state) for Alsace-Lorraine. He was disliked by the German authorities and was replaced by the notary Centlivre, a supporter of the Germans. Nevertheless, Ricklin remained a member of the municipal council until 1908.

In 1896, as Flury's successor, he joined the Bezirkstag of Haute-Alsace of which he became president during World War I. In 1900, the Bezirkstag delegated him to the Landesausschuss - Alsace-Lorraine's quasi-parliament - in Strasbourg, in place of deselected Anton Cassal of Ferrette. In 1903, he was elected to the Reichstag in Berlin, having been elected deputy for the constituency of Thann-Altkirch.

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