Benno Johann Josef Müller

Benno Müller OSB, baptized Johann Josef (* May 7, 1803 in Neuwied ; † April 1, 1860 in Munich ), was professor of biblical studies at the universities of Giessen and Breslau .

biography

After high school in Koblenz, Johann Josef Müller studied Catholic theology and oriental languages at the University of Bonn from 1823 . Here he heard the famous Catholic dogmatist Georg Hermes , who had a lasting impact on his thinking. Following his ordination in 1827, Johann Josef Müller received his doctorate from the University of Munich on the subject of De auctore Pentateuchi . In 1829 he became a private lecturer in Bible exegesis at the University of Bonn. As early as 1830 he was appointed professor of biblical studies at the newly established Catholic-Theological Faculty of the University of Giessen . But in the following year he switched to the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Wroclaw as a professor .

In Breslau there was a conflict with the church authorities because Johann Josef Müller advocated a reason-oriented, critical interpretation of the Bible and in his work De angelorum aliarumque formarum apparationibus commentatio (1832) had expressed himself critically about the reality of angelic apparitions. After a formal leave of absence, Müller first declared his intention to convert to Protestantism and was therefore dismissed from his professorship in Breslau in 1835.

Instead of the announced conversion, however, he entered the Benedictine Abbey of Sankt Stephan in Augsburg in 1836 , from where he soon moved to the Lower Bavarian Benedictine monastery in Metten . Here he received the religious name Benno when he was professed in 1838. In Metten he worked as a teacher at the monastery Latin school as well as a librarian and novice master. In 1841 he was sent to Munich as a teacher at the Neue Gymnasium (today Ludwigs Gymnasium ), which King Ludwig I had entrusted to the Benedictines. There he held the post of rector from 1842 to 1847. After his return to Metten in 1847 he again held the offices of novice master and librarian and was also director of the theological home study in the monastery.

Since returning to Metten from Munich, Benno Müller obviously felt the contradiction between his own monastic-contemplative ideals and the state claims of the Metten Benedictines for school and pastoral care. When he realized that his ideals could not be realized either in Metten or in the newly founded St. Boniface Monastery in Munich, he transferred to the Trappist monastery in Oelenberg in 1851 . When he did not find the peace and tranquility he longed for here either, he returned to Munich, where he lived as a guest in the Benedictine Abbey of St. Boniface until his death.

Benno Johann Josef Müller was the younger brother of Bishop Johann Georg Müller von Münster. In a statement, Benno Johann Josef Müller was critical of Anna Katharina Emmerich's visions .

Works

• Variae de victu Joannis Baptistae opiones examinantur , Bonn 1829.
• De vitiis archaeologiae biblicae atque emendatione , Giessen 1830.
• De angelorum aliarumque formarum apparationibus commentatio , Breslau 1832.
• Disputatio de pentateuchi auctore (Munich program), 1842.
• Disputationis de Pentateuchi auctore particula altera (Munich program), 1843
• Jacobi Balde carmina lyrica , Munich 1844.
• Historia Merdasidarum ex Hallebensibus Cemaleddini Annalibus excerpta (Munich Program), 1844.
• Tragodiae selectae latinitatis recentioris , Munich 1845.
• The Revelation of St. Johannes , Munich 1860.

literature

• Erich Kleineidam : Catholic-Theological Faculty of the University of Breslau 1811–1945 . Wienand, Cologne 1961, p. 142, OCLC 905557680 .
• Wilhelm Fink, History of the Development of the Benedictine Abbey of Metten. Part 1: The Book of Professions of the Abbey (Studies and Communications on the History of the Benedictine Order and its Branches, Supplement 1/1), Munich 1926, 67.
• Michael Kaufmann, Secularization, Desolation and Restoration in the Benedictine Abbey of Metten (1803-1840) (History of the Development of the Benedictine Abbey of Metten, Vol. 4), Metten 1993, 343f. u.ö.
• August Lindner, The writers and the members of the Benedictine order in what is now the Kingdom of Bavaria , Vol. 2, 1880.
• Uwe Scharfenecker, The Catholic Theological Faculty Giessen 1830-1859. Events, structures, people , Paderborn 1998.
• Uwe Scharfenecker, From Gießen to Metten. The life of Johann Josef Benno Müller (1803-1860) , in: Alt und Jung Metten 65 (1998/99), 208-232.
• Uwe Scharfenecker:  MÜLLER, Johann Josef. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 20, Bautz, Nordhausen 2002, ISBN 3-88309-091-3 , Sp. 1059-1061.