Background
Growing up in Frankish Schweinfurt – his father was a Lutheran minister – it was already clear to him as a child that he wanted to go into a religious profession.
Growing up in Frankish Schweinfurt – his father was a Lutheran minister – it was already clear to him as a child that he wanted to go into a religious profession.
From 1895 to 1902 he was at the Stadtvikar in Würzburg, from which in 1903 he took up the preachership of Heilig-Geist-Kirche in Nuremberg. Rittelmeyer worked and closely collaborated with Christian Geyer (1862–1929), the head preacher of the Sebalduskirche, and the pair produced two joint volumes of sermons. Around 1910 they both led discussions with the Bavarian church council on a liberal interpretation of the Bible and the denomination.
In 1916 Rittelmeyer was sent to the Neue Kirche in Berlin, working as preacher there.
At first gripped by nationalist enthusiasm, he soon came to oppose the First World War and with 4 other Berlin theologians signed a proclamation of peace and understanding on the occasion of Reformation Day (October 1917). Rittelmeyer described the encounter and discussed Steiner"s personality and work in his Meine Lebensbegegnung mit Rudolf Steiner (Rudolf Steiner Enters my ).
In the Christengemeinschaft he established in September 1922, Rittelmeyer acted as its first Kultushandlungen (Priesterweihe der Begründenden und Altarsakrament). He was the first "Erzoberlenker" of the "Movement for Religious Revival" (another term for the Christengemeinschaft) and from its base in Stuttgart was its leading envoy right up to his death.
Under National Socialism, he carried out a permanent balancing act: between critical intellectual discussion with Nazism in numerous publications on the one hand and his task of enabling a survival strategy for the Christengemeinschaft (for which he felt responsible) on the other.