Nikolaus Ritter
| Nikolaus Ritter | |
|---|---|
German military photo of Ritter in 1940
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| Birth name | Nikolaus Adolph Fritz Ritter |
| Nickname(s) | Dr. Rantzau (code name) |
| Born |
8 January 1899 Rheydt, German Empire |
| Died | 9 April 1974 (aged 75) Germany |
| Allegiance | |
| Service/branch | Abwehr (German Military Intelligence Service) |
| Years of service |
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| Rank | Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant colonel) |
| Commands held | Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr |
| Battles/wars |
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| Relations | Mary Aurora Evans Ritter (spouse) Irmgard Klitzing(spouse) Katharine Francis Ritter (daughter) Nikolaus Haviland Ritter (son) Karin Ritter (daughter) |
Nikolaus Ritter (8 January 1899 – 1975) is best known as the Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr (German military intelligence) who led spyrings in the United States and Great Britain from 1936 to 1941.
Ritter was born in Rheydt, Germany, the son of Nikolaus Josef Ritter and Käthe Hellhoff. He attended Volksschule (primary school) in Bad Bederkesa from 1905 to 1910, Klostergymnasium (high school) in Flensburg from 1911 to 1914, and he finished his high school diploma (Abitur) at Domgynasium in Verden an der Aller, near Bremen. He then enlisted in the German Imperial Army in World War I and was assigned to the 162nd Infantry Regiment. He served on the Western Front in France where he was twice wounded. Ritter was promoted to Lieutenant in June 1918.
After World War I, Ritter moved to Lauban, Germany (now Poland) and he became an apprentice with a textiles company from 1920 to 1921. In 1921, he attended the Prussian Technical School for Textiles in Sorau, Germany (now Poland) and became a textile engineer. He returned to Lauban as a superintendent of a textile company, but then emigrated to the United States in January 1924 and found employment as a clerk at the Mallinson Silk Company in New York and he also worked odd jobs as a floor layer, housepainter, metalworker and dishwasher. He married Mary Aurora Evans (1898 - 1997), an Irish-American teacher from Alabama in 1926, and together they had two children: Nikolaus Haviland Ritter (21 December 1933 - 2009) and Katharine Francis Ritter (13 December 1934 - ?).
In 1936, Ritter returned to Germany and joined the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence Service. He moved to Hamburg, Germany and brought his family to Germany in 1937. However, Aurora filed for divorce soon after learning of his employment with the Abwehr. In 1939 he married Irmgard Klitzing and with her had a daughter, Karin Ritter (2 January 1940 - ?). Unable to flee Nazi Germany, Aurora and the children lived in Hamburg and survived the devastation of the Allied bombing. In 1946, Aurora and the children returned to the United States, and in 2006 Katharine published a memoir on the life of her mother - Aurora: An Alabama school teacher in Germany struggles to keep her children during WWII after she discovers her husband is a German spy.
In the late 1930s, Ritter became Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr and he operated under the code name: DR. RANTZAU. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, instructed Ritter to contact a former spymaster he knew from the first World War who was living in New York, Fritz Joubert Duquesne. Back in 1931, Ritter had met Duquesne in New York, and the two spies reconnected in New York on 3 December 1937. Ritter also met with Herman W. Lang, a spy who operated under the code name: PAUL.
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