Adolf Müller (politician, 1863)

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Adolf Gustav Müller (born August 19, 1863 in Wittlich ; † September 5, 1943 in Merligen , Switzerland ) was a German politician , diplomat and journalist .

Life

Origin and early years

Adolf Müller came from a Jewish merchant family. Throughout his life he tried to hide his Jewish origins. Much life data is therefore not secured. It is unclear whether he was born in 1863 or 1865. The birthday is also unclear.

He first attended a Jewish private school, then the higher city school in Wittlich and the community school in Trier . He may have studied medicine and economics in Strasbourg . At the same time he was already working as a journalist. He had to quit his studies because of lack of money. He later spread that he had worked as a doctor in British slums or as a ship doctor.

Müller worked for the liberally oriented Herold dispatch service in Gera and Berlin and eventually became director of the office. Through his knowledge and his style, he attracted attention as a journalist. Since 1891 he wrote articles for bourgeois magazines but also for social democratic organs. These included Die Neue Zeit and the socialist monthly bulletins .

Social democratic journalist and politician

In 1893 he joined the SPD. In the same year he began to work for the social democratic daily newspaper Münchener Post . He became its editor-in-chief in 1895. Since then he has been a close confidante of the reformist-oriented Bavarian SPD chairman Georg von Vollmar . Under his aegis, the Munich Post achieved an important national position and the circulation rose from 10,000 to 30,000 copies in 1914. In 1908 he founded a social democratic news office.

From 1899 to 1919 he was a member of the Bavarian state parliament . In 1903 he was offered the candidacy for a seat in the Reichstag, which he refused. From 1910 Müller was deputy chairman of the SPD in Bavaria. Alongside Vollmar and Ludwig Frank , he was one of the main representatives of southern German reformism. He also appeared as such at the party congresses of 1908 and 1910. The South German Social Democrats insisted on the independence of state political decisions without interference from the party executive in Berlin. In doing so, they were also ready to work with the bourgeoisie. This attitude met with massive criticism at the Reich level.

Unofficial diplomat

During the First World War he tried on behalf of the party and with the support of the Bavarian state government and the Reich government to influence foreign social democratic and socialist parties in favor of the German position. Together with left-liberals and right-wing Social Democrats, he founded the "Munich Circle".

He also received a diplomatic passport. As early as 1914, he had been conducting talks and unofficial negotiations with French, British and Italian representatives from Switzerland to end the war. He strove for a mutual agreement. In doing so, he built up an international network of agents. The former French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux was one of the members of this network . From this, Müller received access to secret material. This led to his informant being charged. In Switzerland he had close contacts with the Federal Councilors Arthur Hoffmann and Edmund Schulthess . During the war, Müller put a representative of the Supreme Army Command in touch with Alexander Parvus . He helped him in 1915 to found the Marxist magazine Die Glocke . In 1917 he was also involved in the preparation of Lenin's trip to Russia via Germany, because he believed that the Russian socialists would act in the German sense after their return. During the November Revolution in 1918 he was a member of the provisional Bavarian National Council.

Envoy in Switzerland

From 1919 to 1933, Müller was the first Social Democrat in the service of the Foreign Office as envoy of the German Reich in Bern . Switzerland was benevolent towards him because of the relations he had built up during the war. He carried out the reorganization of the German legation, the reputation of which had fallen sharply after the discovery of a large-scale smuggling of explosives during the war. Due to the war, the number of embassy employees had grown to 2,800. When Müller took over the office, 1,600 civil servants were still working in Bern. Müller reduced the number of employees to 18 by 1926. It was important to him to restore Switzerland's confidence in Germany. In 1925 a trade agreement was concluded between the two countries.

His relationship with Friedrich Ebert as well as with Paul von Hindenburg was close and friendly. Relations with the foreign ministers were also positive. Gustav Stresemann especially valued Müller. However, there were content-related conflicts. Müller fought against Germany's accession to the League of Nations and was against the Locarno Treaties . Overall, Müller criticized that Stresemann was too indecisive about France. He even tried in vain to bring about a domestic political alliance against Stresemann, including Hindenburg, the Reichswehr and various state governments. Müller was the founder and chairman of the Swiss-German aid commission to alleviate the misery in post-war Germany.

Müller initially remained in office after the start of National Socialist rule . He was the last Social Democrat in an important public position. He tried to convince Berlin to keep National Socialist propaganda in Switzerland as low as possible. He largely ignored the decrees of the German government.

In October 1933, Müller stopped working for the Foreign Office. There are different representations of the reasons. A study on the role of the Foreign Office during the Nazi era speaks of age reasons. His biographer Karl Heinrich Pohl says that he gave up the office in the autumn of 1933 because he no longer wanted to serve the regime. Others speak of retirement because of his political stance. His successor was Ernst von Weizsäcker .

Müller did not return to Germany, but stayed in Switzerland. He lived in Merligen on Lake Thun, where he primarily devoted himself to medical-historical studies, particularly about Paracelsus . To prevent him from writing his memoirs , National Socialist agents robbed his archive in 1937 . In Switzerland, Müller was an advocate for German emigrants such as Rudolf Breitscheid and Wilhelm Hoegner .

Honors

Adolf Müller received the following honors:

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl Heinrich Pohl: "The Munich Circle". Social democratic peace policy as secret diplomacy. In: The Powerlessness of the Almighty. Secret Services and Political Police in Modern Society. Berlin 1992, pp. 68f.
  2. ↑ Karl Heinrich Pohl: "The Munich Circle". Social democratic peace policy as secret diplomacy. In: The Powerlessness of the Almighty. Secret Services and Political Police in Modern Society. Berlin 1992, p. 69
  3. ↑ on this in detail: Karl Heinrich Pohl: "Der Münchener Kreis". Social democratic peace policy as secret diplomacy. In: The Powerlessness of the Almighty. Secret Services and Political Police in Modern Society. Berlin 1992, p. 68ff.
  4. ↑ Werner Hahlweg : Lenin's return to Russia 1917. The German files. Leiden 1957, p. 58
  5. ↑ Werner Hahlweg: Lenin's return to Russia 1917. The German files. Leiden 1957, p. 79
  6. ^ Stephan Schwarz: Ernst Freiherr von Weizäcker's Relations with Switzerland (1933–1945) a contribution to the history of diplomacy. Bern et al. 2005, p. 85.
  7. ↑ a b Stephan Schwarz: Ernst Freiherr von Weizäcker's Relations with Switzerland (1933–1945) a contribution to the history of diplomacy. Bern et al. 2005, p. 87.
  8. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and the Federal Republic of Germany. Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 , p. 63.
  9. ^ A b Karl Heinrich Pohl:  Müller, Adolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 344 ( digitized version ).
  10. ↑ Entry in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal database
  11. ^ Tobias C. Bringmann: Handbook of Diplomacy 1815-1963. KG Saur, 2001, p. 82 ( digitized version ).
predecessor Office successor
Konrad Gisbert Wilhelm Freiherr von Romberg Envoy of the German Reich in Bern
1919–1933 		Ernst von Weizsäcker
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller, Adolf Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, politician and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Wittlich , Palatinate
DATE OF DEATH September 5, 1943
Place of death Merligen , Switzerland