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Bernard Herman Ridder was born on March 20, 1883 in New York City, the son of Herman Ridder and Mary Amend. Raised a Roman Catholic, Ridder's family was of German descent; his paternal grandparents had emigrated from Westphalia, Germany, in 1828. Ridder's father was the founder and publisher of a New York German-language newspaper, the Staats-Zeitung.
Education
Ridder received his primary education at De La Salle Institute in New York. After receiving a B. A. from Columbia University in 1903, he did graduate work in Leipzig, Germany, from 1903 to 1905.
Career
Ridder began his newspaper career in the business and editorial departments of the Brooklyn Eagle.
Ridder joined the staff of the Staats-Zeitung. There he learned every aspect of the newspaper business and became president of the Staats-Zeitung Corporation when he and his two brothers inherited the company following their father's death in 1915. He also completed Hyphenations, his first book, in 1915. The book did not enjoy much popular success and is not considered among his worthiest accomplishments. Ridder began to build his family's business with the merger in 1918 of the Staats-Zeitung with several other German-language newspapers, creating the Staats-Zeitung und Herold. He served as president of the publishing company until the family sold the business in 1930.
In 1933, several months after the Nazi regime seized power in Germany, Heinz Spanknoebel, a representative of the German Labor Front and the chief of the foreign division of the Nazi party, came to the offices of the Staats-Herold. He showed Victor Ridder, one of Bernard's brothers, letters authorizing him to assume power over the German-language press in the United States. He told the Ridders that his first order of business would be to stop publishing "your pro-Jewish articles. "
In a 1943 judicial proceeding to nullify citizenship of Nazis in the United States, Victor Ridder testified that his brother Bernard walked in, was shown the letters and immediately replied, "All I can tell you, Spanknoebel, is to get the hell out and stay out. " Spanknoebel continued to attack the newspaper and attempted to stir up opposition to the paper and support for the Nazi movement among Americans of German descent until he left the United States a few months later. Ridder and his brothers acquired the Jamaica Long Island Press in 1926, marking the start of their venture into the English-language press.
The next year they purchased the New York Journal of Commerce for $2. 5 million and the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the St. Paul Dispatch for a combined price of $5. 25 million.
The Ridders formed Northwest Publications, Inc. , the same year as a parent company for their two Minnesota newspapers. Bernard Ridder served as president of the two St. Paul newspapers and the Journal of Commerce from 1927 to 1931, when he sold his interests in all three. The three Ridder brothers continued to acquire small-town papers. They obtained control of Minnesota's Duluth New Tribune and Duluth Herald in 1936 and bought the San Jose Mercury and News in 1952.
In 1938, Ridder moved to St. Paul to rejoin the Pioneer Press and St. Paul Dispatch as editor and publisher. He remained in this capacity until his son, Herman H. Ridder, became publisher in June 1946.
Bernard Ridder stayed on as editor of both newspapers until 1950. He became president of both journals in 1952. He held the positions of vice-president of Northwest Publications from 1938 to 1946 and of president and director from 1946 until his death.
He and his third wife traveled together extensively, and starting in 1946 published a yearly diary of their travels entitled The Year. They took many photographs, amassing a library of some thirty thousand color slides, which is available for use by all public schools in St. Paul and colleges and universities in the Midwest.
Although Ridder enjoyed huge professional success during the 1960's, his personal life was troubled.
By 1974, the Ridder organization owned or held considerable interest in nineteen daily newspapers in ten states in the Midwest and on the West Coast.
In late 1974, Ridder Publications merged with Knight Newspapers, Inc. , to form Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Inc. The merger formed a group with thirty-five publications in seventeen states and one that remains a dominant force in American journalism today. Ridder had considerable business dealings outside of his newspaper empire. He was named president and director of the St. Paul Arcade Company and the Otto Bremer Company in 1952.
He died at St. Mary's Hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida, at the age of ninety-two.