First Occupant Named to Chair in German Studies

One of the world’s foremost scholars of the German Reformation, Ronald K. Rittgers, began serving July 1 as Valparaiso University’s first Erich Markel chair in German studies.

Ronald K. Rittgers, the Erich Markel chair in German studies

Rittgers comes to Valpo from Yale University, where he was an associate professor of the history of Christianity in Yale Divinity School and taught in the department of history. 

His research focuses on the Reformation and the history of theology and piety in late medieval and early modern Christianity. Rittgers’ recent book, “The Reformation of the Keys: Confessions, Conscience and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany,” was nominated for the American Society of Church History’s prestigious Philip Schaff Prize in 2005.

Rittgers currently is researching the efforts of Protestant reformers to change the way their contemporaries understood and coped with suffering, for a new book titled “The Reformation of Suffering in Early Modern Germany and Switzerland.”

The Markel chair is supported through an endowment fund created by the Max Kade Foundation. It honors a former president of the foundation who previously served on the faculty of VU’s School of Law.