supported Prussia against Austria, and Germany against France. In his last years he received from the German government a pension of 1000 marks. He died on the 31st of December 1880.
Ruge was a leader in religious and political liberalism, but did not produce any work of enduring importance. In 1846–48 his Gesammelte Schriften were published in ten volumes. After this time he wrote, among other books, Unser System, Revolutionsnovellen, Die Loge des Humanismus, and Aus früherer Zeit (his memoirs). He also wrote many poems, and several dramas and romances, and translated into German various English works, including the Letters of Junius and Buckle’s History of Civilization. His Letters and Diary (1825–80) were published by Paul Nerrlich (Berlin, 1885–87). See A. W. Bolin’s L. Feuerbach, pp. 127-52 (Stuttgart, 1891).
RUGELEY, a market town in the Lichfield parliamentary
division of Staffordshire, England, in the Trent valley. Pop.
of urban district (1901), 4447. The London & North-Western
railway has stations on the main line (Trent Valley, 124½ m.
N.W. from London), and at the town, on a branch line to
Walsall. The Grand Trunk canal here follows the Trent. To
the S.W. lie the hills of Cannock Chase. The church of St
Augustine is modern; of the parish church of the 14th century
only the tower and chancel remain. The municipal offices,
market hall and assembly-room are contained in one building
(1879). A grammar school was founded in 1611. There are
ironfoundries, corn-mills and tanneries; and the parish includes
several collieries.
RÜGEN, an island of Germany, in the Baltic, immediately
opposite Stralsund, 1½ m. off the north-west coast of Pomerania
in Prussia, from which it is separated by the narrow Strelasund,
or Bodden. Its shape is exceedingly irregular, and its coastline
is broken by numerous bays and peninsulas, sometimes
of considerable size. The general name is applied by the
natives only to the roughly triangular main trunk of the island,
while the larger peninsulas, the landward extremities of which
taper to narrow necks of land, are considered to be as distinct
from Rügen as the various adjacent smaller islands which are
also included for statistical purposes under the name. The
chief peninsulas are those of Jasmund and Wittow on the north,
and Mönchgut, at one time the property of the monastery of
Eldena, on the south-east; and the chief neighbouring islands
are Ummanz and Hiddensee, both off the north-west coast.
Rügen is the largest island in Germany. Its greatest length
from N. to S. is 32 m.; its greatest breadth is 25½ m.; and
its area is 377 sq. m. The surface gradually rises towards the
west to Rugard (335 ft.)—the “eye of Rügen”—near Bergen,
but the highest point is the Hertaburg (505 ft.) in Jasmund.
Erratic blocks are scattered throughout the island, and the
roads are made with granite. Though much of Rügen is flat
and sandy, the fine beech woods which cover a great part of
it, and the bold northern coast scenery combine with the
convenient sea-bathing offered by the various villages around
the coast to attract large numbers of visitors. The most beautiful
and attractive part of the island is the peninsula of Jasmund,
which terminates to the north in the Stubbenkammer (Slavonic
for “rock steps”), a sheer chalk cliff, the summit of which, the
Königsstuhl, is 420 ft. above the sea. The east of Jasmund is
clothed with an extensive beech wood called the Stubbenitz,
in which lies the Borg, or Herta Lake. Connected with Jasmund
by the narrow isthmus of Schabe to the west is the
peninsula of Wittow, the most fertile part of the island. At
its north-west extremity rises the height of Arcona, with a
lighthouse.
A ferry connects the island with Stralsund, and from the landing-stage at Altefähr a railway traverses the island, passing the capital Bergen to Sassnitz, on the north-east coast. Hence a regular steamboat service connects with Trelleborg in Sweden, thus affording direct communication between Berlin and Stockholm. The other chief places are Garz, Sagard, Gingst and Putbus, the last being the old capital of a barony of the princes of Putbus. Sassnitz, Göhren, Sellin and Lauterbach-Putbus are among the favourite bathing resorts. Schoritz was the birthplace of the patriot and poet, Ernst Moritz Arndt. Ecclesiastically Rügen is divided into 75 parishes, in which the pastoral succession is said to be almost hereditary. The inhabitants are distinguished from those of the mainland by peculiarities of dialect, costume and habits; and even the various peninsulas differ from each other in these particulars. The peninsula of Mönchgut has best preserved its peculiarities; but there, too, primitive simplicity is yielding to the influence of the annual stream of summer visitors. The inhabitants raise some cattle, and Rügen has long been famous for its geese; but the only really considerable industry is fishing,—the herring-fishery being especially important. Rügen, with the neighbouring islands, forms a governmental department, with a population (1905) of 47,023.
The original Germanic inhabitants of Rügen were dispossessed by Slavs; and there are still various relics of the long reign of paganism that ensued. In the Stubbenitz and elsewhere Huns’ or giants’ graves are common; and near the Hertha Lake are the ruins of an ancient edifice which some have sought to identify with the shrine of the heathen deity Hertha or Nerthus, referred to by Tacitus. On Arcona in Wittow are the remains of an ancient fortress, enclosing a temple which was destroyed in 1168 by the Danish king Waldemar I., when he made himself master of the island. Rügen was ruled then by a succession of native princes, under Danish supremacy, until 1218. After being for a century and a half in the possession of a branch of the ruling family in Pomerania, it was finally united with that duchy in 1478, and passed with it into the possession of Sweden in 1648. With the rest of Western Pomerania Rügen has belonged to Prussia since 1815.
See Fock, Rügensch-pommersche Geschichten (6 vols., Leipzig, 1861–72); R. Baier, Die Insel Rügen nach ihrer archäologischen Bedeutung (Stralsund, 1886); R. Credner, Rügen. Eine Inselstudie (Stuttgart, 1893); Edwin Müller, Die Insel Rügen (17th ed., Berlin, 1900); Schuster, Führer durch die Insel Rügen (7th ed., Stettin, 1901); Boll, Die Insel Rügen (Schwerin, 1858); O. Wendler, Geschichte Rügens seit der ältesten Zeit (Bergen, 1895); A. Haas, Rügensche Sagen und Märchen (Greifswald, 1891); U. John, Volkssagen aus Rügen (Stettin, 1886); and E. M. Arndt, Fairy Tales from the Isle of Rügen (London, 1896).
RUHLA, a town of Germany, partly in the duchy of Saxe-Weimar
and partly in that of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Pop. (1905)
7017. It stretches along the valley of the Erb in the Thuringian
forest 8 m. S. of Eisenach, and attracts a number of visitors
owing to its beautiful natural surroundings and its mineral
springs. Its staple industry is the making of wooden and
meerschaum pipes; it has also electrical works, and some
small manufactures. Ruhla, which is known locally as
Die Ruhl, was famous in the middle ages for its armourers, and
subsequently for its cutlers.
See Ziegler, Das Thüringerwalddorf Ruhla (Dresden, 1876).
RUHNKEN, DAVID (1723–1798), one of the most illustrious scholars of the Netherlands, was of German origin, having been born in Pomerania in 1723. His parents had him educated for the church, but after two years at the university of Wittenberg he determined to live the life of a scholar. At Wittenberg Ruhnken lived in close intimacy with the two most distinguished professors, Ritter and Berger. To them he owed a thorough grounding in ancient history and Roman antiquities and literature; and from them he learned a pure and vivid Latin style. At Wittenberg, too, Ruhnken derived valuable mental training from study in mathematics and Roman law. Probably nothing would have severed him from his surroundings there but a desire which daily grew upon him to explore the inmost recesses of Greek literature. Neither at Wittenberg nor at any other German university was Greek in that age seriously studied. It was taught in the main to students in divinity for the sake of the Greek Testament and the early fathers of the church. F. A. Wolf is the real creator of Greek scholarship in modern Germany, and Porson’s gibe that “the Germans in Greek are sadly to seek” was barbed with truth. It is significant of the state of Hellenic studies in Germany in 1743 that their leading exponents were Gesner and Ernesti. Ruhnken was well advised by his friends at Wittenberg to seek the university of Leiden, where, stimulated by the influence of Bentley, the great scholar Tiberius Hemsterhuis had founded the only real school of Greek learning which had existed on the Continent since the days of Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon.
