Elisabeth Müller (author)

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Elisabeth Müller in her garden in Hünibach around 1950.

Elisabeth Müller (born September 21, 1885 in Langnau im Emmental ; † June 22, 1977 in Hünibach near Thun ) was a Swiss author and writer for young people .

Life

Family origin

Elisabeth Müller was born as the youngest of six children of Ernst Müller (1849–1927) and Anna Müller-Rüetschi (1854–1886). Her father had been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Jena for his story of the Bernese Anabaptists (Frauenfeld 1895) and worked as a Reformed pastor in Langnau from 1884 to 1927 . The mother died a year after Elisabeth was born, and the father then married her sister Emma (1856–1910), with whom he had three other children.

From training to illness

After she had attended secondary school in Langnau like all her siblings , Elisabeth was accepted into the municipal teacher training college Monbijou in Bern at the age of 16 . After a six-month substitute on the Schonegg in the Sumiswald community , she was finally elected as a teacher in Lützelflüh in 1906 . In 1909 she moved to the civic orphanage in Bern until she fell ill with tuberculosis in 1913 , was treated in various sanatoriums until 1918 and then returned to her family in Langnau. During this time of external and internal crisis she found her way to writing. Religiously she approached pietism , which brought her into a certain opposition to her theologically decidedly liberal father.

1921–1935: Work in Thun

In 1921 she took up a position at a private school in Thun. After four years, she switched to the Bern State Seminar for Teachers in Thun as a methodology teacher. There she had the status of an assistant teacher and was also constantly teaching a third and fourth class as a so-called «practice school», in which the seminarians completed their teaching internship.

Freelance writer and adult educator

From 1935, at the age of 50, Elisabeth Müller worked primarily as a freelance writer and adult educator. Last year, her sister Hedwig founded a gardening school in Hünibach near Thun, which has been called Hünibach Horticultural School (GSH) since 1993 and is the only biodynamic horticultural school in Switzerland. At the school led by Hedwig, Elisabeth taught political studies and later also correspondence. The two sisters lived together in a house in Hünibach.

Elisabeth developed a rich lecture activity on questions of upbringing and family life. Most of her Bern German Christmas stories were written during the Second World War . She later worked as an editor for saemann , a monthly newspaper for Reformed church members in the canton of Bern. She sympathized with the Bernese Farmers, Trade and Citizens' Party , the predecessor organization of the Swiss People's Party , and was friends with the politician Rudolf Gnägi .

Müller's estate is in the Burger Library in Bern .

Honors

In 1946 Elisabeth Müller received the Swiss Youth Book Prize and in 1954 both the honorary citizenship of Langnau and an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern ; later the honorary citizenship of Hünibach was added. In 1955 she received the City of Bern's Literature Prize for the second time after 1939 , which had gone to Friedrich Dürrenmatt the previous year .

filming

Elisabeth Müller's youth novel The Six Kummerbuben , published in 1942, was made into a feature film and a 13-part television series in 1968 under the direction of Franz Schnyder .

Works

Works for adults

  • Parents' blessing . Story, Einsiedeln 1910
  • Fride i Huus and Härz. Bärndütschi story for us people , Bern 1940
  • Martinssümmerli u other love story , Bern 1948
  • The source. Memories , Bern 1950
  • Heimatbode. Bärndütschi History , Bern 1955
  • Doors open. A piece of life's work. Memories , Bern 1957
  • What grows in silence . A selection of saemann articles, Bern 1962

Collected Christmas stories

Works for children and young people

literature

  • Walter Lädrach: Elisabeth Müller , Bern 1957 (Berner Heimatbuch 68)
  • Fritz Wartenweiler : Elisabeth Müller and her world , Zurich 1967
  • Samuel Geiser: Elisabeth Müller. Life and Work , Zurich and Stuttgart 1978
  • Renata Egli-Gerber: Elisabeth Müller: Life and Work - An Approach , Bern 2004 ( ISBN 3727213329 )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of the Hünibach Horticultural School
  2. ^ Elisabeth Müller's estate in the catalog of the Bern Burger Library

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer for young people
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Langnau in the Emmental
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1977
Place of death Hünibach near Thun