Friedrich Müller (classical philologist)

Heinrich Christian Georg Friedrich Müller (born December 25, 1900 in Lüneburg , † August 28, 1975 in Mölln ) was a German classical philologist who worked as a lecturer and professor at the University of Marburg from 1938. He dealt mainly with the Greek literature of antiquity, especially with the writings of the church father Gregory of Nyssa .

Life

Friedrich Müller, the son of master cooper Friedrich Müller and his wife Frieda (née Stehr), attended secondary school in Lüneburg and then the Johanneum grammar school . Towards the end of the First World War he interrupted his schooling for six months in the military. In March 1920 he passed the school leaving examination.

Müller then studied philosophy, Protestant theology and classical philology at the University of Marburg ; he also attended art-historical, German, Indo-European and historical lectures and acquired the gymnastics certificate. After three semesters, he switched to the University of Munich , where he concentrated on classical philology (with Eduard Schwartz , Rudolf Pfeiffer and Ernst Kapp ) and attended archaeological lectures with Heinrich Wölfflin . In the winter semester of 1922/1923, Müller moved to the Berlin University , where he closely followed the Graecist Werner Jaeger . He remained a supporter of Jaeger's concept of humanism throughout his life and supported his teacher in various research projects. On March 2, 1928 Müller was the dissertation stylistic study of Epinomis of Philip of Opus PhD (first referee was Werner Jaeger, second supervisor Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff ).

After graduating as a teacher, Müller only worked for a short time as a teacher in Züllichau and then went to the Pforta state school in 1931 . Müller developed a friendly relationship with the then rector Walther Kranz , a Wilamowitz student. In Schulpforta he also continued his scientific work: on behalf of Werner Jaeger, he studied the writings of the church father, Gregor von Nyssa. This work enabled him to start his university career.

When the Pforta state school was converted into a National Socialist educational institution in 1935, Müller was released and imprisoned for seven weeks in the Columbia concentration camp in Berlin. Thanks to a letter of recommendation from Hans Lietzmann , he received an assistant position at the Philological Seminar of the University of Münster (with Franz Beckmann ) in 1936 . There , Müller completed his habilitation in 1938 with an unprinted text on the history of the transmission of the writings of Gregory of Nyssa. In the winter semester of 1938/1939 he switched to the University of Marburg as a private lecturer in classical philology. In 1943 he was appointed associate professor. His teaching work was interrupted by the Second World War. After active military service at the front and brief captivity, he returned to Marburg in 1947 and resumed teaching. In 1955 he was appointed full professor of Greek studies and retired on October 1, 1968 .

Services

Friedrich Müller was a loyal student of Werner Jaeger. He represented his concept of humanism until his death, although it was strongly contested and suppressed during National Socialism and in the rethinking after the Second World War. For science, however, Jaeger's influence on Müller's research was more decisive: from exile at Harvard, he encouraged him to edit Gregor von Nyssa twice, in the 1930s and in the 1950s. The essays and critical editions from this work made many of this church father's writings usable for research for the first time.

Müller's independent work was also important for research. In his dissertation, Müller examined the question of whether the dialogue Epinomis comes from Plato himself or from his student Philippus von Opus . His result (in favor of Philip) triggered a lively research debate, which ultimately led to the fact that the authorship of Plato (previously communis opinio ) was largely rejected. Müller himself hardly intervened in this debate: he only commented on this in 1940 in a review of Hans Ræder's book Plato's Epinomis (Copenhagen 1938) and encouraged his student Hans Lier to write a dissertation on the Epinomis (Marburg 1966), which led to the same result came.

During his time as a lecturer in Marburg, Müller devoted himself to work on the Gregor Edition on numerous other topics. He published essays on the Hippocratic Oath , Paul's Letter to the Romans, and Homer's parables . After his return from captivity, he limited his philological publication activities to the Gregor edition.

literature

• Kurt Aland (Ed.): The Splendor and Decline of the German University: 50 Years of German Scientific History in Letters to and from Hans Lietzmann (1892–1942). Berlin / New York 1979, p. 843
• Inge Auerbach: Catalogus professorum academiae Marburgensis. Second volume: 1910 to 1971 . Marburg 1979, pp. 574-575
• Otto Lendle : Friedrich Müller † . In: Gnomon , Vol. 48 (1976), pp. 521-523.

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Müller in the catalog of the German National Library