Br. Athanase Emile

Louis A. Ritimann was born in 1880 in Bourdonnay and age sixteen sought admission to religious life at the Brothers' Novitiate in Reims in 1896. There he received the habit of the Brothers and the religious name of Brother Athanase Emile. He taught in many schools in France and in 1928, at the age of forty-eight, was named Assistant to the Superior General. Following World War II he was chosen by his Brothers as the eighteenth Superior General of the Institute. Brother Athanase Emile visited the United States in 1948 during the centennial of the Baltimore District. He died at age seventy-two, having been Superior General for only four years and having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for fifty-six years.