Joachim Daniel Andreas Müller

Daniel Müller

Joachim Daniel Andreas Müller (also Daniel Andreas Joachim Müller or Daniel Müller ; born September 7, 1812 in Stralsund , †  September 18, 1857 in Uppsala ) was a Swedish gardener and writer.

Life

Origin, job and family

Müller was born in Stralsund in what was then Swedish Pomerania . His grandfather came from the Swedish Skåne and had come to Pomerania as "Lieutenant Möller". His father was a successful commercial gardener and had changed the family name to Müller. Daniel Müller attended grammar school and then began an apprenticeship in his father's company at the age of 17.

Between 1836 and 1838 he attended lectures by Christian Friedrich Hornschuch at the University of Greifswald . There he befriended Ferdinand Jühlke . In the botanical garden of the university he completed a second apprenticeship, after which Hornschuch gave him the gardening management of the garden. As one of the successors of Carl von Linné , he was given the position of botanical gardener at Uppsala University on the recommendation of Hornschuch in 1839 . In addition to his horticultural and botanical skills, his language skills in both German and Swedish made it possible for Müller to fill the position. In the following years he acted as a link in horticultural research between the two countries and published numerous articles in specialist journals in both languages.

Before his departure, since his position in Uppsala enabled him to feed a family, which was often difficult for a gardener at the time, he married the teacher's daughter Clarissa Louise Nernst (1808–1878) from Rügen. With her he led a fulfilling family life and took on responsibility for three foster children . After problems with the head of the garden, Müller resigned after two years and switched to the newly founded "Swedish Horticultural Association" in Stockholm as a teacher at the newly founded master gardener school and gardener of the club garden. There he was responsible for planting trials and organized exhibitions. He planned the greenhouses. His work was so successful that the association was supported by the Swedish state from 1844. Müller himself also trained himself with trips to Germany, Denmark and in 1846 with the support of the Swedish royal family to one of the horticultural strongholds of that time in Saint Petersburg .

At the suggestion of Ferdinand Jühlke, in 1848 he became an honorary member of the "Horticultural Association for New Western Pomerania and Rügen". In the same year he was involved in founding the “Stockholm Garden Society” and became its founding chairman. Also in 1848 his three-volume work Trädgårdsskötsel ('Garden Art') appeared with the subtitle Instructions to create and maintain gardens. This was published in several editions after his death and was the most influential Swedish horticultural book of its time. In 1849 he opened the “Charlottenburgs handelsträdgård” in Reimersholme, the first Swedish market gardening company. After Elias Magnus Fries had received the professorship for botany at Uppsala University and thus also became head of the botanical garden, this prompted Daniel Müller to return to the university as a botanical gardener. As a result, the population increased to 8,000 to 9,000 different plant species that were cultivated there. Also on behalf of the “Economic Society”, Müller laid out a two-hectare tree nursery for fruit and ornamental trees south of the botanical garden. For this he received the gold medal of the Economic Society. The teacher training graduates were then taught on the nursery site. In 1856 he designed the plan for a botanical garden in Visby .

In 1854 Müller went on a sea voyage to cure a breast disease. In 1857 he died, like most of his employees at the Botanical Garden, during a cholera epidemic in Uppsala. He was buried in the old Uppsala cemetery. His tombstone, paid for by a fundraising collection from friends and former apprentices, is still there today. In 1874 friends founded the “Daniel Müller scholarship fund”, a scholarship fund administered by the Stockholm Gardeners' Association. This should enable gardeners to receive travel grants.

Writing and reception

Daniel Müller had already started writing poetry as a teenager and exchanging ideas with like-minded people. He also saw a way of making the world a better place in his horticultural activities. In 1844 he published a volume of poetry with his wife, intended only for friends and acquaintances. In 1855 the poet Thekla Knös (1815–1888) lived with him for some time after the death of her mother. Together with Fredrika Bremer she attended lectures by Elias Fries. Together with the women, Müller published the volumes of poetry Fyrväplingen - vers och prosa ('Vierblättriges Kleeblatt - Vers und Prosa') and Konvaljerna - en sago-krans ('Lily of the valley - A wreath of legends'). Müller's poems revolved around a few topics. It was about the love for his wife and the vitality of the plant world and on the other hand about lost home, death and eternity. Joachim Schnitter considers Müller's romanticism to be real and sees his prose also featured in the horticultural specialist articles. Müller lived before the description of the theory of evolution and focused his thinking on the "moral" conclusions from a nature that could do without humans. He saw a godly development in nature and the plant world, in which humans as “cultivators” are allowed to intervene.

Against this background, he was also involved in the debate at the time about introducing horticulture as a subject. He saw horticulture as an opportunity to have a “moral” effect on the rural population, and even saw its general distribution and the associated preoccupation with “beautiful plants” as a way of curbing alcoholism.

Web links

Commons : Daniel Müller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Joachim Daniel Andreas Müller in the Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (Swedish)
• Literature by and about Joachim Daniel Andreas Müller on libris.kb.se (accessed on August 16, 2015)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Joachim Schnitter: “Practical Natural Philosophy” in the work of the German-Swedish gardener Joachim Daniel Andreas Müller (1812–1857) , Hamburg, 2007 online as a pdf