Background
Herman Ridder was born on March 5, 1851 in New York City, the son of Herman and Gertrude Maria (Tiemann) Ridder, who emigrated to the United States from Westphalia.
Herman Ridder was born on March 5, 1851 in New York City, the son of Herman and Gertrude Maria (Tiemann) Ridder, who emigrated to the United States from Westphalia.
His schooldays ended at the age of eleven when he was forced to go to work as an errand and office boy.
At thirteen he entered the service of the Tradesmen's Fire Insurance Company, resigning after fourteen years, when a successful agent, to found the Katholisches Volksblatt, a weekly publication devoted to the interests of the German Catholics in the United States. This paper he discontinued in 1886, feeling the need of carrying on the same work in the English language, for which purpose he established the Catholic News.
The success of this weekly made him one of the most influential laymen in his church, to which he was always ardently devoted. This field of activity proving too narrow for his abilities, Ridder in 1890 became the manager of the New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung, the foremost German language daily in the country, and in the course of time purchased the paper from its owner, Oswald Ottendorfer. He directed and managed the Staats-Zeitung until his death.
Politically an independent Democrat, he was especially prominent in the Cleveland campaigns for the presidency as a leader of the German-American group, and in 1895 he organized the German-American Reform Union as part of the anti-Tammany campaign. His opposition to Tammany never flagged.
In 1908 he became the treasurer of the national democratic committee, serving as such during the last Bryan campaign for the presidency. In the campaign of 1912 he was an elector on the Democratic ticket and received the highest number of votes cast for the Democratic electors.
From 1900 to 1915 Ridder was one of the ablest and most useful directors of the Associated Press, of which he was one of the first members. For two years, from 1907 to 1909 he was its treasurer.
From 1907 to 1911 he was president of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association, the most responsible position in the gift of the publishers of the United States, his service being especially valuable because of his aggressive leadership. In an investigation of the print paper situation in the United States and Canada in 1911, which even at that time menaced the welfare of the press, he displayed great determination and courage. His civic interests were wide and he gave freely of his time and strength to philanthropic and public undertakings. He was the active head of the celebration in 1909 of the three hundredth anniversary of the discovery of New York and the Hudson River by Henry Hudson, and of the centennial of Fulton's putting the steamer Clermont in service. According to Mayor George B. McClellan, but for Ridder this celebration "would never have been undertaken" and "never could have been carried to a triumphant conclusion. "
He played an important part in the journalistic, civic, and political life of the metropolis. He deserves especially to be remembered for his advocacy of tariff reform, as well as his fight for good government in New York City, and for the wise stand taken by the Staats-Zeitung toward the World War and Germany's part in it; no journalist could have been put into a more difficult position than was he by this struggle and the character that it assumed. Essentially a self-made man, he owed his success to untiring labor, marked executive ability, and unusual powers of persuasion, which usually made him the successful advocate of any cause that he pleaded.
(Excerpt from Hyphenations Tion from day TO day, a column...)
On April 6, 1880, he was married in New York to Mary Amend, who bore him five sons.
