Johannes von Müller

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Johannes von Müller, painting by Anton Wilhelm Tischbein , 1787 or 1788, Gleimhaus Halberstadt

Johannes von Müller (* as Johannes Müller on January 3, 1752 in Schaffhausen ; † May 29, 1809 in Kassel ), raised to the nobility by Leopold II on February 6, 1791 as a nobleman von Müller zu Sylvelden , was a Swiss historian , Publicist and statesman.

Life

Johannes Müller was the son of pastor and teacher Johann Georg Müller (1722–1779) and Anna Maria Schoop (1724–1790) and the older brother of the Schaffhausen theologian, educator and statesman Johann Georg Müller (1759–1819).

He studied theology in Göttingen from 1769–71, and there, encouraged by August Ludwig von Schlözer , began a sensational Latin treatise on the Cimbrian War, which appeared in Zurich in 1772 . Friendship u. a. with Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim and Johann Georg Jacobi , start of correspondence with Friedrich Nicolai and collaboration with his General German Library (ADB).

He passed the theological exam in Schaffhausen in 1772 and became professor of the Greek language at the Collegium Humanitatis there. In 1773 he became a member of the Helvetic Society and established his friendship with Karl Viktor von Bonstetten . 1774–75 he was tutor to the sons of the wealthy councilor Jacob Tronchin (1717–1801) in Geneva ; during this time he was in contact with Voltaire . From 1776 to 1780 he lived on Lake Geneva as a private tutor, partner and private scholar with the American Francis Kinloch , the philosopher Charles Bonnet and the former Geneva General Procurator Jean-Robert Tronchin (1710-1793). Müller was in lively correspondence with leading European enlighteners and statesmen (in Switzerland e.g. with Gottlieb Emanuel von Haller (1735–1786), Johann Heinrich Füssli (1745–1832), Beat Fidel Zurlauben etc.), who encouraged him to to complete his Swiss history, for which he excerpted extensive sources. From 1775 to 1780 he explored most of the Swiss regions every year, and from 1778 to 1780 he gave lectures on constitutional and universal history.

In 1780 the first volume of The Stories of the Swiss appeared in Bern (with the fictitious, programmatic printing location Boston ) and caused a sensation in the German-speaking world.

After a stay in Berlin in the winter of 1780/81, where he was received by Frederick the Great but not employed, he worked as a professor of history and statistics at the Collegium Carolinum in Kassel from 1781–82 . In November 1782 he became a sub-librarian there. In Kassel, Müller was briefly a member of the Order of the Illuminati , on the other hand, like his friends Georg Forster and Samuel Thomas Sömmerring , he was close to the Rosicrucian Order there . In 1782 he published anonymously on the occasion of Pope Pius VI's visit to Germany. his book Journeys of the Popes directed against Joseph II .

Müller's friendship with Johann Gottfried Herder , who, along with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, had a strong influence on him in terms of history and philosophy , was established in March 1782 when Müller visited his brother Johann Georg in Weimar , who spent the winter of 1781/82 with Herder as a private student (both brothers were Müller from 1805 involved in the first Herder edition as co-editor). It was there that he met Johann Wolfgang Goethe for the first time , who remained on friendly terms with Müller until his death.

Johannes von Müller

The Elector of Mainz , Archbishop and Imperial Chancellor Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal appointed Müller after he had spent the years 1783–85 again as a private scholar in Geneva , Schaffhausen and Bern, in 1786 as court librarian in Mainz . There he completed volumes I (new version), II (1786) and III.1 (1788) of his Swiss history (volumes III.2, IV and V.1 did not appear until 1795, 1805 and 1808). In 1787 (in Leipzig) he anonymously published the work Presentation of the Princes' League , in which he spoke out against a Habsburg supremacy in the empire and Europe and in favor of a balance of powers. During this time the friendship with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi began . In 1787 he made diplomatic trips to Rome ( Karl Theodor von Dalbergs elected coadjutor ) and Switzerland. In 1788, as the Electorate of Mainz, he became an important political advisor to the Elector, and in the same year he was also a councilor in Schaffhausen. In 1791 he was elected councilor of Mainz. Müller played a key role in the appointment of Georg Forster and Wilhelm Heinse to Mainz and worked for the Jenaische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung .

Shortly before the establishment of the Mainz Republic , Müller was called to Vienna by Emperor Franz II in 1792 , where he a. a. worked as a diplomat at the secret court and state chancellery and from 1800 as curator at the court library . During this time there was a friendship u. a. with Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall and Archduke Johann of Austria . Müller visited Switzerland for the last time in 1797 on a diplomatic mission and in 1804 (visiting a.o. Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and August Wilhelm Schlegel at Coppet Castle ).

In 1802 the 22-year-old Friedrich von Hartenberg from Schaffhausen , who had been entrusted to Müller as a pupil in 1795, used his same-sex predisposition to induce him to surrender large sums by ficting a Hungarian Count Louis Batthyany Szent Ivany. Under this name, Hartenberg exchanged letters with Müller for ten months, in which he suggested the desire for a permanent partnership. Müller transferred all his assets and other funds entrusted to him to his supposed friend. When the fraud was discovered, Müller sued Hartenberg, the latter apparently defending himself that he had been sexually abused by Müller . While Hartenberg was sentenced to eleven months in prison, Müller was able to pull himself out of the affair by taking an oath, which, however, damaged his reputation and also compromised him politically.

After this scandal, the so-called Hartenberg affair, Müller went to Berlin in 1804 , where he had been appointed court historiographer for the House of Brandenburg with secret council character and secret war council. He also became a full member of the Academy of Sciences . In Berlin he had acquaintances a. a. with Alexander von Humboldt , Zacharias Werner , Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Prince Louis Ferdinand .

Initially an avid supporter of military action against France, Müller submitted to the defeat of Prussia in the autumn of 1806 and was received by Napoleon for an audience on November 20, 1806 . Müller believed he recognized an instrument of divine providence in the emperor and decided, on the advice of close friends, not to turn down Napoleon's favor and to wait for the further course of the political situation. Müller's controversial Berlin speech in January 1807 on Frederick the Great , De la gloire de Frédéric , which ended with a bow to Napoleon, was welcomed by Goethe with approval, immediately translated into German and published, but widely regarded as treason.

At the personal instigation of Napoleon, Müller became Minister of State in the Kingdom of Westphalia under King Jérôme in 1807 . However, Müller was not up to this task and asked for his dismissal. Jérôme dismissed him on February 26, 1808 from this office, which he gave to his favorite Pierre Alexandre le Camus , Count von Fürstenstein, and Müller instead became director of public education in the Kingdom of Westphalia. In doing so, he campaigned for numerous educational institutions oppressed by the Westphalian administration (for example for the threatened University of Göttingen , where he supported his old friend Christian Gottlob Heyne ). He took action against the country teams and urged the university authorities to exercise strict supervision. From Goettingen of doing so regularly reported informally Christoph Meiners , u. a. via the acting Vice Rector Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, who is moderate in student matters . Müller's successor as director of public education was the former Göttingen constitutional lawyer Justus Christoph Leist (1770–1858).

Throughout his life, Müller was in close correspondence with intellectuals, statesmen and friends in Europe and overseas: as an epistolograph, in particular through the anonymously published letters of a young scholar (to Karl Viktor von Bonstetten ) in 1798 , he had a strong impact on the early Romantics . His extensive estate, including around 20,000 letters to him, is kept in the Schaffhausen City Library.

Its stocky, u. a. German prose style based on ancient models (especially Tacitus , Caesar and Thucydides ) was admired on the one hand (e.g. by Friedrich Gundolf and the George Circle ), but also heavily rejected and caricatured.

effect

The tomb donated by the Bavarian King in 1852, based on a design by Friedrich Brugger and Leo von Klenze

Müller was u. a. Stimulator of the Walhalla near Regensburg ( King Ludwig I of Bavaria was a great admirer of Müller and also donated his tomb in Kassel) and the Monumenta Germaniae Historica ; he introduced the term Federal Republic (after Montesquieu ) into the German language.

As a patriotic national historian as well as a teleologically and providentially oriented universal historian, he had a strong influence on Swiss and German historiography of the first half of the 19th century (e.g. Arnold Heeren , Leopold von Ranke , Friedrich von Raumer or Johann Friedrich Böhmer) as a promoter and role model ), his work is an original example of narrative-literary , politically charged historiography in the transition from the Enlightenment to historicism .

Due to his abrupt partisanship for Napoleon and his relatively open and also surprisingly present male love , which weighed heavily on him due to his deep piety , he was a person and author in the 19th and 20th centuries. T. violent defamations, in addition to the Berlin North Star Association , to which, among other things, Adelbert von Chamisso belonged, and the Heidelberg Romantics , among others, a. Eduard Fueter , Friedrich Meinecke or Emil Ermatinger (1873–1953) contributed to the controversial image of Müller in intellectual history; his mediation between enlightenment and counter- enlightenment z. B. Müller was interpreted as a character weakness, the admiration of his contemporaries presented as delusion and overestimation.

The appropriation of Johannes von Müller by right-wing conservative national circles (e.g. by Gonzague de Reynold , Ernst Bertram , Rolf Henne or as part of the intellectual national defense of the 1930s) and the methodical criticism of liberal and socio-historical researchers of the 19th and 20th centuries The 20th century of Müller's Swiss history has led to defensive reflexes in critical research towards Johannes von Müller's work and himself.

Newer encyclopedias and manuals on the history of historiography usually count Müller among the epigones or do not even mention him.

Voices on Johannes von Müller

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Our lonely friend was one of the strangest individualities I have known. He is a nature that will never reappear.
  • Friedrich Schiller bowed to Müller in the last act of his Wilhelm Tell , it is said of the murder of King Albrecht: a man worthy of faith, Johannes Müller brought it from Schaffhausen.
  • In 1959, in his radio essay Johannes von Müller or vom Gehirntier , written for the SDR , Arno Schmidt dealt with the extensive work and person of Johannes von Müller (reprinted in: Belphegor. Nachrichten von Büücher und Menschen. Karlsruhe 1961, and in the Fischer- Paperback 755 Tina / or about immortality Frankfurt 1966).
  • In 1990, Paul Derks dedicated Müller in his compendium on the discourse of "Homosexuality and the public sphere in German literature 1750-1850" ( The Shame of the Holy Pederasty ) to the comprehensive cultural-critical essay A man to be believable, Johannes Müller .

Works

As an author:

  • All works. Edited by Johann Georg Müller . 27 volumes. Cotta, Stuttgart 1810-19, 1831-35 (2nd edition in 40 volumes).
  • The correspondence between the brothers Johann Georg Müller and Johannes v. Müller 1789-1809. Edited by Eduard Haug. Huber, Frauenfeld 1893.
  • General view of the Federal Republic of Switzerland. German version, 1776–1771. Edited by Doris and Peter Walser-Wilhelm. 2 volumes. Ammann, Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-250-50000-3 .
  • Bonstettiana. Edited by Doris and Peter Walser-Wilhelm. 14 volumes. Wallstein / Lang, Bern / Göttingen 1996–2011, ISBN 3-906757-90-0 .
  • Vue générale de l'histoire du genre humain. 2 volumes. Cotta, Tübingen 1817-19.
  • “In small states, great thoughts die out for lack of great passions.” Encounters with Johannes von Müller. A reader . Edited by Stefan Howald . Wallstein, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89244-601-6 .
  • Johannes von Müller, Johann Georg Müller: Correspondence and family letters 1766–1789. Edited by André Weibel. 6 volumes. Wallstein, Göttingen 2009–2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0453-6 , ISBN 978-3-8353-0487-1 .
  • "You have found a mirror that reflects you in everything". Letters to Count Louis Batthyány Szent-Iványi. Edited by André Weibel. 2 volumes. Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1383-5 .

As editor:

  • The trumpet of the Holy War from the mouth of Mohammed son Abdallah the Prophet. Johann Friedrich Gleditsch, Leipzig 1806.

literature

  • Heinrich Boos : Directory of the manuscripts and incunabula of the Schaffhausen City Library, together with a directory of the handwritten estate of Johannes von Müller. Schaffhausen 1903.
  • Paul Derks : The Shame of Sacred Pederasty. Homosexuality and the public sphere in German literature 1750–1850. Rosa Winkel, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-921495-58-X , pp. 295-369.
  • Michael Gottlob: Historiography between the Enlightenment and Historicism. Johannes von Müller and Friedrich Christoph Schlosser. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-631-40739-4 .
  • Karl Henking: Johannes von Müller. 2 volumes. Cotta, Stuttgart / Berlin 1909–28.
  • Christoph Jamme, Otto Pöggeler (ed.): Johannes von Müller - historian of the time of Goethe. Meili, Schaffhausen 1986, ISBN 3-85805-131-4 .
  • Matthias Pape : Johannes von Müller - his intellectual and political environment in Vienna and Berlin 1793–1806. Franke, Bern 1989, ISBN 3-317-01662-0 .
  • Matthias Pape:  Müller, Johannes v .. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 315-318 ( digitized version ).
  • Paul Requadt: Johannes von Müller and early historicism . Three masks, Munich 1929.
  • Dirk Sangmeister: “What is the trinket of fame and what is the dream of life!” Johannes von Müller and the “Gallery of Prussian Characters”. In: Bargfelder Bote, Lfg. 187 (1994), pp. 1-18.
  • Karl Schib : Johannes von Müller . In: Schaffhauser Contributions to History. Biographies Volume I . 33rd year 1956, pp. 91–112 ( PDF )
  • Karl Schib: Johannes von Müller 1752–1809. Augustin, Thayngen-Schaffhausen 1967.
  • Doris and Peter Walser-Wilhelm, Marianne Berlinger Konqui (eds.): Historiography at the beginning of the 19th century in the vicinity of Johannes von Müller and the Groupe de Coppet. Slatkine / Champion, Paris / Geneva 2004, ISBN 2-7453-1220-0 .
  • Franz Xaver von Wegele :  Müller, Johannes von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, pp. 587-610.
  • André Weibel: Müller, Johannes von. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Louis Wittmer: Le Prince de Ligne, Jean de Muller, Frédéric de Gentz ​​et l'Autriche. Honoré Champion, Paris 1925.
  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Müller, Johannes von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 19th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1868, pp. 360–372 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Johannes von Müller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Johannes von Müller  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller : Man for man. Suhrkamp, ​​Stuttgart, 2001, ISBN 3-518-39766-4 (p. 527ff.)
  2. ^ Karl Henking : Johannes von Müller 1752-1809. Volume 2, Stuttgart / Berlin 1909-28 (pp. 545-86).
  3. ↑ "You have found a mirror that reflects you in everything". Letters to Count Louis Batthyány Szent-Iványi. Edited by André Weibel. 2 volumes. Wallstein, Göttingen 2014
  4. ↑ Otto Deneke: Old Göttinger Landsmannschaften. Göttingen 1937, p. 55 ff.
  5. ↑ Excerpts from Otto Deneke: Alte Göttinger Landsmannschaften. Göttingen 1937, p. 57 ff.
  6. ↑ So z. B. the quote from Otto Deneke: Old Göttinger Landsmannschaften. Göttingen 1937, p. 55 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Johannes von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller, Johannes (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1752
PLACE OF BIRTH Schaffhausen
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1809
Place of death kassel