Günther Müller (literary historian)

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Günther Müller (born December 15, 1890 in Augsburg , † July 9, 1957 in Bonn ) was a German specialist in German.

Life

Günther Müller was the son of the writer, journalist and literary critic Carl Müller-Rastatt (1861-1931). He studied philology and philosophy in Würzburg, Munich, Leipzig and Göttingen, a. a. with Edward Schröder and Edmund Husserl . As a student he published expressionist poems in the magazine Der Sturm , u. a. under the pseudonym "Günther Murr". In later decades he continued to work as a poet alongside his work as a literary scholar. Günther Müller served as a volunteer during the First World War .

After the war ended, Müller taught as a grammar school teacher. In 1921 he received his doctorate at the University of Göttingen with a dissertation on "Brentano's romances of the rosary, magic and mysticism in a romantic and classical style". Just one year later, he completed his habilitation with "Studies on the form problem of minnesang".

In 1920 Günther Müller converted to the Catholic Church. From 1926 to 1939 he edited the literary yearbook of the Görres Society . He was considered one of the formative representatives of Catholic literary studies. He himself was less comfortable with the attribution of “Catholic literary studies”.

In 1925 he was given a teaching position in Freiburg (Switzerland) , and in 1930 a scheduled extraordinary position in Münster , where he taught German literary history. Because of his undisguised Catholic attitude, he came into conflict with the NSDAP Gauleitung Westfalen-Nord soon after the “ seizure of power ” . The National Socialists, who accused him of his “Catholic view”, initially withdrew his examination authorization so that he could no longer supervise students. As a result, he mainly devoted himself to research. He was one of the editors of the volumes of the series New German Research, which were published in the Department of Modern German Literary History from 1935 to 1943 by Junker and Dünnhaupt . Under pressure from the National Socialists, he retired in 1943.

From 1946 until his retirement in 1956, Günther Müller taught as a full professor in Bonn. He shaped "generations of students and doctoral candidates". One of his students was Eberhard Lämmert .

Müller dealt intensively with Goethe's work, especially with his scientific writings. The "morphological poetics" propagated by him, which was strongly influenced by Goethe's ideas about morphology and was aimed at researching poetic "structural forms", is now only of interest in the history of research. In contrast, his distinction between narrated time and narrative time , which plays an important role in narratology, has remained effective .

Honors

  • Günther Müller had been a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt since 1949 .
  • In the same year, the University of Cambridge awarded him an honorary doctorate, an award for a German four years after the end of the war, which received great attention.

Fonts

  • Brentano's Romances of the Rosary, Magic and Mysticism in a Romantic and Classical Style (1922)
  • Studies on the form problem of minstrels. In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft and Geistesgeschichte , vol. 1 (1923), pp. 61-103.
  • History of the German song from the Baroque era to the present day. Munich 1925 (2nd edition 1961)
  • German poetry from the Renaissance to the end of the Baroque (1927, reprint 1957)
  • Court culture (1929), together with Hans Naumann
  • The Age of Mysticism (1930)
  • German Poetry and Thinking from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era (1934)
  • History of the German soul. From Faust book to Goethe's Faust (1939)
  • Destiny and Saelde (1939)
  • The question of shape in literary studies and Goethe's morphology (1944)
  • The importance of time in storytelling (1947)
  • Brief biography of Goethe (1947)
  • Goethe's morphology and its significance for poetry (1951)
  • as ed. with Richard Alewyn : Gestaltprobleme der Dichtung. Günther Müller on his 65th birthday on December 15, 1955. Bonn 1957.
  • Günther Müller. Morphological poetics. Collected Essays. Edited by Elena Müller in conjunction with Helga Egner. Darmstadt 1968.

literature

Footnotes

  1. ↑ For Carl Müller-Rastatt see: Art. Müller-Rastatt, Carl . In: Wilhelm Kosch (ed.): German Literature Lexicon, Biographical and Bibliographical Handbook . 2nd ed. Vol. 2: Hasenberger - Müllner . Francke, Bern 1953.
  2. ↑ See u. a. in Vol. 2, No. 100 of March 2, 1912, p. 10.
  3. ↑ Federal Archives : stock identity for discount Müller, Günther (1890-1957) .
  4. ↑ a b c Holger Dainat: Müller, Günther . In: Neue Deutsche Biographie , Vol. 18, 1997, pp. 395-397.
  5. ↑ Holger Dainat: A subject in the "crisis". The "discussion of methods" in modern German literary studies . In: Otto Gerhard Oexle (ed.): Crisis of Historicism - Crisis of Reality . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-35810-8 , pp. 247-272.
  6. ^ Günther Müller: Catholic literary studies? In: Yearbook of the Association of Renaissance Societies , vol. 7 (1928/1929), pp. 52–58.
  7. ^ Andreas Pilger: German studies at the University of Münster. From the beginnings around 1800 to the time of the early Federal Republic . Synchron Wissenschaftsverlag der Authors, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-48-3 , pp. 367–368.
  8. ↑ Michael Grüttner , Sven Kinas: The expulsion of scientists from German universities from 1933 to 1945 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , vol. 55 (2007), pp. 123–186, here p. 184 ( PDF ).
  9. ^ Liselotte Folkerts: Goethe in Westphalia. Not love at first sight . Lit, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-10938-5 , p. 70.
  10. ↑ Lothar Müller : Departure into world literature. The Germanist Eberhard Lämmert has died . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 5, 2015, p. 14.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Müller, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Germanist
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1957
Place of death Bonn