Rittinger, John Adam b. February 16, 1855; Berlin, Ontario d.July 29, 1915; Berlin (Kitchener), Ontario
German Canadian publisher, journalist, writer, and humorist. Rittinger’s father, Friedrich, had immigrated to Canada in 1847. John Adam Rittinger was one of a long list of authors and editors of nineteenth-century Canadian German-language journals and newspapers, such as Henry William Peterson, Benjamin Burk
holder, Peter Heinrich, Elias Eby, Joachim Kalbfleisch, Otto Pressprich, Hans Sikorski, Jakob Teuscher, Daniel and Jakob Ritz, John and William J.
Motz, and Friedrich Rittinger (father of John Adam). As an editor and publisher, Rittinger was interested and involved in public affairs. He propagated a fervent Canadian patriotism and the maintenance and promotion of German language and culture that, in his view, were not only compatible with Canadian culture but also desirable. From among his many journalistic and public affairs writings, Rittinger’s writing proved to have lasting literary value in his “Briefe vun Joe Klotzkopp, Esq.” (Letters of Joe Klotzkopp, Esq.). These letters, which he wrote and published from 1890 until his death in 1915, total 120, all published in the Ontario Glocke and the Berliner Journal. The letters were composed in the Pennsylvania German dialect, a German dialect common among Germans of nineteenth-century Ontario. The publishing of texts in the Pennsylvania German dialect in German-language newspapers was a tradition at the time, and under various noms de plume, letters were published in almost all German-language newspapers in upper Canada, Nova Scotia, and lower Canada. In a very short time, Rittinger’s Joe Klotzkopp letters became the most favored among the large number of these writings. It is noteworthy that Rittinger was not of Pennsylvania German descent and acquired the dialect later, yet to an admirable competency. The hallmark of Rittinger’s Klotzkopp letters was their humor, similar to that of the great Canadian literary humorists Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796—1865) and Stephen Leacock (1869—1944), both in quality and impact. For the most part, the letters deal with matters of public concern in contemporary Ontario (upper Canada) and Canada as a whole. Less often, Rittinger wrote letters and poems of an occasional type, such as a description of his son’s birthday party. Despite the thematic restriction of the letters to regional Canadian matters, their literary value consists of their linguistic and stylistic treatment of the themes and of their humoristic and ironic mode of narration.Steven Totosy de Zepetnek
See also Berliner Journal; Berlin/Kitchener, Ontario; Literature, German Canadian; Pennsylvania German (Dutch) Language; Ontario
References and Further Reading
Boeschenstein, Hermann, ed. Heiteres und
Satirisches aus der deutschkanadischen Literatur: John Adam Rittinger, Walter Roome, Ernst Loeb, Rolf Max Kully Toronto: German-Canadian Historical Association, 1980, pp. 21—73.
Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven. “A Selected Bibliography of Theoretical and Critical Texts about Canadian Ethnic Minority Writing.” In Literary Theory and Ethnic Minority Writing. Ed. Joseph Pivato. Special Issue of Canadian Ethnic Studies / Etudes ethniques au Canada 28, 3 (1996): 210-223.
Weissenborn, Georg K. “John Adam Rittinger: The ‘Glockemann’ (1855-1915).” In Deutschkanadisches Jahrbuch / German- Canadian Yearbook. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1984, pp. 221-224.