Robert Mühlher

Robert Mühlher, ca.1970

Robert Mühlher (born February 22, 1910 in Vienna ; † June 22, 2003 ibid) was an Austrian German scholar and literary scholar .

Live and act

Born into modest circumstances as the son of a private civil servant, Robert Mühlher attended the Vienna-Breitensee Federal Educational Institute after the early death of his father. The director of this grammar school was the well-known Germanist Otto Rommel , who gave Mühlher's interest in literature and everything artistic in his stimulating, intellectual and cultural education as well as imaginative education decisive impulses, so that after graduating from the University of Vienna in 1928 he studied German, English and philosophy studied. Important teachers such as Josef Nadler, with whom he received his doctorate in 1933 with a dissertation on Friedrich Hölderlin's "Empedocles" fragments, Paul Kluckhohn , Eduard Castle , Robert Franz Arnold, Marianne Thalmann, Hans Rupprich , Dietrich Kralik trained his scientific thinking and work. He heard lecturers from the rank of Leo Frobenius , Ludwig Klages , Edmund Husserl , Martin Heidegger , Alfred Adler , Thomas Mann , Rabindranath Tagore and also attended lectures in musicology.

Before he was employed as a librarian by Count Wilczek at Seebarn Castle / Lower Austria and Kreuzenstein Castle / Lower Austria in 1937/1938, Mühlher made a name for himself as a lecturer in various Viennese literary societies, such as B. the Adalbert Stifter Society. From 1939 to 1952, interrupted by the war years 1940–1945, he was head of the catalog department at the Austrian National Library , where he set up a large Goethe exhibition in the Goethe year 1949 and wrote the corresponding catalog. With a series of symbolic research under the title “Seal of Crisis. Myth and Psychology in the Poetry of the 19th and 20th Centuries ”, he completed his habilitation in 1952 at the University of Vienna, where he worked from 1952 to 1954 as a private lecturer.

In 1954 he was appointed to the chair for Modern German Language and Literature at the University of Graz, where he was professor from 1963 to 1980. In his work with the students, new, modern points of view, subtle research work and a rousing flow of speech secured the interest of a very large, enthusiastic audience for the time, including 99 dissertations by doctoral students such as Peter Vujica , Otto Kolleritsch , Wolfgang Zörner, Uwe Baur, Erwin Streitfeld u. a. To give evidence.

In his work as a scientist and researcher covering German literature from the 18th to the 20th century, he “tried to combine the point of view of text interpretation as precisely as possible with the history of words, motifs and symbols”. Motif research studies, especially of romantic literature, "examining the supra-personal history-forming and history-bearing powers of literary development and establishing a balance between these and the recognition of the unique personal achievement of the artist" were the aim of his research work. Mühlher's drive for literary-historical work was To grasp the origin of a poetic work in the context of the living conditions and inner needs of the poet and to trace its meaning in literary-psychological consciousness, to bring to light the mythical in poetry and the visionary in poetry.

To the same extent, preoccupation with general German literary history and the maintenance of Austrian literature were of particular concern. In the abundance of lecture and essay topics, works by Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Büchner, ETA Hoffmann, Eichendorff, Rilke, Grillparzer, Raimund, Nestroy, Hesse, Th. Mann, Musil formed the focus of his research.

As Vice President of the Vienna Goethe Association , Mühlher was editor of the “Yearbook of the Vienna Goethe Association” from 1960 to 1977. He converted the "Chronik des Wiener Goetheverein", which existed up to that point, into an important series of publications for literary-historical work and gave "first-rate specialist representatives [...] a forum for the hundred years 1750–1850, without denying entry to important work outside of this seculum. "

In the last years of his life, Mühlher u. a. in his studies on ETA Hoffmann . His unprinted estate is cataloged and accessible in the Vienna Library.

Bibliography (selection)

• Friedrich Hölderlin's Empedocles torso. Attempt at a psychological interpretation of the idealistic guilt and hubris problem. Masch. Phil. Dissertation Vienna 1932.
• About temporal and eternal. (Ed. Together with Adelinde Mühlher). Vienna-Zurich-New York 1948.
• Kleist and Adam Müller's friendship crisis. Vienna-Zurich-New York 1948.
• Seal of crisis. Myth and Psychology in 19th and 20th Century Poetry. Vienna 1951.
• Masterpieces of World Literature (ed.) . 15 volumes, Vienna-Baden 1950–1952.
• Yearbook of the Vienna Goethe Association (ed.) . Vienna 64 (1960) - Vienna 80 (1976).
• Natural language and natural music with Eichendorff. Wuerzburg 1961.
• Eichendorff's story 'From the life of a good-for-nothing'. Wuerzburg 1962.
• The modern psychological novel in Austria. Vienna 1964.
• ETA Hoffmann: Night Pieces. The Sandman. The dreary house. The stone heart. With an essay for understanding the works and a bibliography. Hamburg 1964.
• On the background of Lenau's imagery. Vienna 1966.
• Shape and reality. (Ed. Together with J. Fischl). Festival for F. Weinhandl. Berlin 1967.
• Princess Brambilla. A contribution to the understanding of poetry. Amsterdam 1968.
• Seal from Austria. (Ed. Together with H. Kindermann, M. Dietrich and E. Thurnher). Anthology in three volumes and a supplementary volume. Prose. 2 part volumes with 100 pages of introduction. Vienna-Munich 1969.
• Marginalia on the poetic world (edited by A. Eder, H. Himmel and A. Kracher) . Festschrift for R. Mühlher's 60th birthday. Berlin 1971.
• Austrian poet since Grillparzer. Vienna 1973.
• Studies on Classical and Romanticism. 1975.
• German poets of the Classical and Romantic periods. Vienna 1976.
• Herbert Günther. Festschrift. Krefeld 1977.
• Laudation for Fritz Usinger. Darmstadt 1982.
• Living allegory. Studies on Eichendorff's life and work. Sigmaringen 1989.
• A self-portrait, in: Humanitarian Doing. Treatises of the Humboldt-Ges. für Wiss., Kunst und Bildung 11, 1990.

Memberships

• Board member of the German Goethe Society
• Austrian PEN Club
• Gorres Society
• ETA Hoffmann Society
• Franz Grillparzer Society
• Adalbert Stifter Institute Upper Austria
• President of the Vienna Goethe Association 1974–1977
• Eichendorff Society Würzburg
• Senior member of the Academic Council of the Humboldt Society
• Austrian Richard Wagner Society Graz
• Honorary member of the Hebbel Society Vienna
• Board member of the Institute for Austrian Studies (Literature Department)
• Vienna Catholic Academy

Honors

• Goethe Medal from the Federal Ministry of Education, 1949
• Winner of the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art 1st Class 1979
• Medal of the Eichendorff Society 1980

Web links

Commons : Robert Mühlher  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Robert Mühlher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by Robert Mühlher in the literature archive of the Austrian National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Austrian University Newspaper , May 15, 1955
2. ↑ ibid
3. ^ Kessler [ed.], Humanitarian Doing. Treatises of the Humboldt Society 1990
4. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ Austrian Goethe Society
6. ↑ http://www.friedrich-hebbel.de/Gwien.htm
7. ↑ Robert Mühlher in NRW literature on the net