Dr Rüdiger Ritter (b. 1966) is a historian, musicologist, and exhibition curator. He studied in Mainz, Dijon, Cologne, and Volgograd. In 2002 he defended his PhD thesis on Musik für die Nation. Der polnische Komponist Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–1872) und die polnische Nationalbewegung [Music for the Nation. Polish composer Stanisław Moniuszko (1819 – 1872) and the Polish national movement], Frankfurt/Main 2005).
He has worked as a researcher on the following projects: ‘West–Eastern Images: the German image of Russians and the Russian image of Germans’ (University of Wuppertal), 'Collective identity and history in post-socialist discourses: Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine’ (University of Bremen), ‘Americans in Bremerhaven’ (Museum of the Fifties, Bremerhaven), ‘Opposition by cultural transfer: jazz in the Eastern Bloc’ (Freie Universität, Berlin), ‘Discourses and Europe in Polish underground periodicals' (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa an der Universität Bremen), ‘Bumpy road to solidarity: Developing an understanding between Solidarity emigres and their partners in West Germany in the 1980s’ (Technical University of Chemnitz). He wrote his habilitation thesis on Jazz during the Cold War between weaponry and a means of cultural transfer – Willis Conover’s broadcasts on the Voice of America and their reception in the former Eastern bloc countries (TU Chemnitz, manuscript completed in December 2017).
He serves as deputy director of the Museum of the Fifties, Bremerhaven. Exhibitions include: ‘Polish Jazz in the Photographs of Marek Karewicz' (Berlin, collaboration 2017?), ‘Art – Power – Eastern Europe. Czesław Miłosz and Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis' (Bremen, 2011), ‘Narrow arête. The Czechoslovak jazz scene in the 1970s and 1980s' (Bremen, Prague, Bratislava, 2016-2017).
He is an organ player and chorus master at St. Dionys Church, Bremerhaven.