Ritter, Robert

(?-1950)

   Germany. Psychologist and doctor. A race scientist during the Nazi regime who in 1936 founded an institute that later became the Race Hygiene and Population Biology Research Center of the Ministry of Health in Berlin. He took over existing records on Gypsies. His aim was to track down every Gypsy in the country and classify them as pure- or part-Gypsy. By 1942, he claimed to have files on 30,000 persons living in Germany and Austria. The policy he proposed was to intern part-Gypsies in work camps and sterilize them. Pure Gypsies should be allowed to travel but kept apart from mixing with Germans.