Nikolaus Müller (theologian)

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Nikolaus Müller (also Nicolaus Müller ; born February 8, 1857 in Großniedesheim , † September 3, 1912 in Berlin ) was a German Protestant theologian , church historian and Christian archaeologist .

Life

Born as the son of the landowner Andreas Müller and his wife Elisabeth, b. Koch, he grew up with his brothers Emanuel, Philipp Theodor and Jakob Richard in petty bourgeois circumstances in the Bavarian Palatinate. After attending grammar schools in Frankenthal (Palatinate) and Zweibrücken until 1876, he enrolled at the University of Erlangen in the winter semester of 1876/77 to devote himself to classical philology. After a short stopover at the University of Berlin , he returned to Erlangen, where he expanded his studies to include Protestant theology and then went to the University of Munich . During his studies in 1876 he became a member of the Germania Erlangen fraternity .

He recorded the lectures meticulously. On August 9, 1881, Müller received his doctorate in philosophy in Erlangen , with the work De latinitate Inscriptionum Galliae christianarum . He then carried out private studies, focusing primarily on church history and Christian archeology . In addition, he worked in Erlangen and Berlin, among others, he traveled in 1882/83 with the travel grant of the German Archaeological Institute , was in Rome from 1883 to 1885 , where he stayed in Venosa in 1884 . There he dealt with the history of the Reformation and began to process the correspondence kept in Rome between Philipp Melanchthon and Joachim Camerarius the Elder. Ä.

He was promoted to a licentiate in theology at the University of Leipzig on February 19, 1887 , and was brought to Kiel University by Gustav Kawerau (1847–1918) in 1887 , where he worked on the 8th volume of the Weimar Luther Letters edition and as a private lecturer in historical theology until 1890 was active. From Kawerau he was recommended to the University of Berlin, where he succeeded Ferdinand Piper on March 18, 1890 as associate professor for church history and director of the Christian Museum of the university. Financial constraints forced Müller in the Christian museum to return to the original task of Christian archeology and epigraphy .

Müller's research on early Christian art and early Christian burial sites in Italy earned him the vice-presidency of the Second Congress for Christian Archeology in Rome in 1900 . On October 6, 1904, he became an honorary citizen of Venosa . He also distinguished himself as a researcher of the Reformation period and Melanchthon, as he had preserved the hermeneutical, methodical distance and the source-oriented view of the history of the Reformation in his historical studies . His legacy is still the subject of a wide variety of researches, which mainly focus on the territorial area of ​​the Reformation.

Müller was also the driving force behind the establishment of the Melanchthon Memorial and Research Center in Bretten , for which he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Theological Faculty of the University of Berlin on February 16, 1897 and an honorary citizen of Bretten on November 9, 1903.

Works (selection)

  • The finds in the tower knobs of the town church in Wittenberg, Magdeburg Evangelische Buchhandlung Ernst Holtermann , 1912
  • The Wittenberg Movement 1521 and 1522. The events in and around Wittenberg during Luther's stay in the Wartburg. Letters, files and similar personal details. Leipzig 2nd edition 1911
  • The churches and school visits in the Belzig district in 1530 and 1534 and news about the churches and school servants in the city and the Belzig office during the Reformation. Berlin 1904

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Böttger (ed.): Directory of the old fraternity members according to the status of the winter semester 1911/12. Berlin 1912, p. 141.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Müller, Nikolaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller, Nicolaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and church historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Großniedesheim
DATE OF DEATH September 3, 1912
Place of death Berlin