geographer Ellen Churchill Semple as well as Martha Krug-Genthe, the first woman to obtain a doctorate in geography. Ratzel produced the foundations of human geography in his two-volume Anthropogeographie in 1882 and 1891. This work was misinterpreted by many of his students, creating a number of environmental determinists. He published his work on political geography, Politische Geographie, in 1897. It was in this work that Ratzel introduced concepts that contributed to Lebensraum and Social Darwinism. His three volume work The History of Mankind was published in English in 1896 and contained over 1100 excellent engravings and remarkable chromolithography. Ratzel continued his work at Leipzig until his sudden death on August 9, 1904 in Ammerland, Lake Starnberg, Germany. Ratzel, a scholar of versatile academic interest, was a staunch German. During the outbreak of Franco-Prussian war in 1870, he joined the Prussian army and was wounded twice during the war. Writings Influenced by thinkers including Darwin and zoologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, he published several papers. Among them is the essay Lebensraum (1901) concerning biogeography, creating a foundation for the uniquely German variant of geopolitics: Geopolitik. Ratzel's writings coincided with the growth of German industrialism after the Franco-Prussian war and the subsequent search for markets that brought it into competition with Britain. His writings served as welcome justification for imperial expansion. Influenced by the American geostrategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, Ratzel wrote of aspirations for German naval reach, agreeing that sea power was self-sustaining, as the profit from trade would pay for the merchant marine, unlike land power. Ratzel's idea of Raum (space) would grow out of his organic state conception. His early concept of lebensraum was not political or economic but spiritual and racial nationalist expansion. The Raum-motiv is a historically-driving force, pushing peoples with great Kultur to naturally expand. Space, for Ratzel, was a vague concept, theoretically unbounded. Raum was defined as where German peoples live, and other weaker states could serve to support German peoples economically, and German culture could fertilize other cultures. However, it ought to be noted that Ratzel's concept of raum was not overtly aggressive, but he theorized simply as the natural expansion of strong states into areas controlled by weaker states. The book for which Ratzel is acknowledged all over the world is Anthropogeographie. It was completed between 1872 and 1899. The main focus of this monumental work is on the effects of different physical features and