Christoph Gottlob Müller

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Christoph Gottlob Müller

Christoph Gottlob Müller (born November 11, 1785 in Winnenden ; † March 17, 1858 ibid) was the first native speaker to bring Methodism to Germany.

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Christoph Gottlob Müller was the son of a butcher from Winnenden near Stuttgart. He learned the butcher's trade from his father and then went on a hike. In order not to have to go to war with the Napoleonic troops, he fled from Strasbourg to England in 1806 . There he came into contact with the Methodist Awakening and Sanctification Movement and joined the Methodist Church there. He became a class leader , a kind of house group leader, and occasionally preached. In 1830 he visited his parents and brought Methodist piety to pietist groups in his former homeland.

Although he traveled back to his family, small groups related to the Methodist movement arose in and around Winnenden. The Winnender bottle maker Imanuel Strubel (1788-1856) asked the Wesleyan Methodist Mission Society in London to send Müller to Württemberg as a missionary . Due to a lack of knowledge, the mission society initially hesitated, but then sent him in February 1831. In September of the same year, Müller's family from London followed suit.

Müller was initially close to the Moravian Brethren and spoke at their meetings, but then withdrew from the Moravian Brothers due to religious differences and held meetings in his parents' house in which he testified his personal Christian faith. Lots of people joined in, and so the movement spread. The Oberamt Waiblingen was uncomfortable with Müller, so that he was questioned several times by the Oberamtmann and the district government even canceled his residence permit in July 1832, which was later revoked. In any case, Müller and his people did not come into serious conflict with the state church , because the visitors to his meetings continued to attend the regional church services and had the sacraments , baptism and communion donated by their pastors. Like John Wesley before him, Müller refused to part with the state church. Rather, Müller tried to awaken the spiritual life within the state church and also cultivated a friendly relationship with the Winnender parish priest Heim.

As early as 1835, Müller reported to London that his community in Winnenden had 326 members. At the end of 1839 there were 622 members and 64 staff holding 80 meetings a week. By 1848 the Methodist community had grown to between 1,500 and 2,000 people. In that year, Müller largely gave up his missionary work due to an asthma suffering. Christoph Gottlob Müller died in 1858 and left behind “ Pietist communities with a Methodist touch ” ( lit .: quoted in Steckel, Sommer, p. 86) - according to his direct successor Lyth.

The movement ( Wesleyan Methodist Community ) spread under Müller's successors John Lyth (1821-1886) and later John Barratt (1832-1892) - both were ordained pastors of the British Methodist Church - gradually to Baden , Bavaria , Austria , Bohemia and Ober Silesia from. It was integrated into the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1897 .

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literature

personal data
SURNAME Müller, Christoph Gottlob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Pioneer of the Wesleyan Methodist Community in Germany
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1785
PLACE OF BIRTH Winnenden
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1858
Place of death Winnenden