Robert Müller (writer)

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Robert Müller by Egon Schiele

Robert Müller (born October 29, 1887 in Vienna ; † August 27, 1924 there ) was an Austrian writer , journalist and publisher . While he is controversial as an essayist, his novel Tropen is considered. The Myth of the Journey (1915) as a masterpiece of German exoticism at the turn of the century.

Life

Robert Müller was born on October 29, 1887 as the son of Erna and Gustav Müller in Vienna. The father came from a merchant family from the Bohemian Reichenberg, the mother came from Cologne. As a student, Robert Müller attended the Piarist High School in Vienna . After graduating from high school, he began studying philology at the University of Vienna in 1907 . In February 1910 he traveled to New York, where he worked for a German-language newspaper, the New Yorker Herold. After his return in the autumn of 1911, he became involved in the 'Academic Association for Literature and Music in Vienna', for which, as head of the literature section, he organized a lecture evening with Karl May in March 1912.

In the First World War , Müller initially took part as a volunteer . His three brothers Erwin, Adolf and Otto Müller stood with him at the front, the latter he lost at Asiago. Robert Müller himself suffered a nervous shock when a shell hit the Isonzo in August 1915 and had to be suspended from arms service. He was employed as an adjutant in a Vienna war hospital, where he was promoted to lieutenant. After serving as editor of the Belgrader Nachrichten in 1916, Müller was made available to the Vienna War Press Quarters as a consultant for the English press in 1917. The war experience led Müller to get closer to the pacifist camp and to join the cultural revolutionary literary activism . In November 1918, Müller initiated a subversive secret society, the Catacomb, in Vienna. It merged with the 'Association of the Spiritually Active', in which Müller played a leading role. Together with his commercially gifted brother Erwin, Robert Müller has now expanded a small magazine distribution company into a joint stock company with branches in Budapest, Prague and Zagreb. In the region of the former Habsburg monarchy, the Literaria group controlled the delivery of the program of well-known German publishers from Mosse to Kiepenheuer and Ullstein to Rowohlt.

In 1923, Robert Müller resigned as director, even before Literaria AG went bankrupt due to its expansive business practices. For the time being, the management of the satirical magazine "Muskete" remained in Müller's hands from this business relationship. In January 1924, the now 36-year-old founded his own publishing house, Atlantischer Verlag, and announced an ambitious program. He raised a share capital of 200 million crowns (more than 11,000 gold marks) in cash. However, due to a sales crisis on the book market, Müller found himself in a desperate economic situation in the summer. On the morning of August 27th, he shot himself in the lung in Freudenau, and around one o'clock in the afternoon he died of the injuries in Rudolfs Hospital. The municipality of Vienna had to pay the burial costs. In addition to his wife Olga (née Estermann), Müller left two daughters named Erika and Ruth. The City of Vienna has been granting Robert Müller an honorary grave since November 2005 and is responsible for maintaining the family grave number 99 in the 23rd square of the Matzleinsdorf cemetery.

Writing activity

The journalistic work of the author, who is friends with Erhard Buschbeck , Kurt Hiller , Egon Schiele , Otto Flake and Robert Musil , includes journalistic works, essays , novels and short stories that made him known beyond Austria.

Müller published since 1912 for various expressionist magazines ( Saturn , Daimon, Der Friede, etc.). He was in charge of the following publications: "Der Ruf" (1913/1914), "Der Anbruch" (1917/1918), "Der Strahl" (1919), "Die Neue Wirtschaft" (1918/1919) and "Zeitgeist" (1922). Müller wrote for the "Reichspost", the "Wiener Mittags-Zeitung", the "Austro-Hungarian Finance Press", the " Prager Presse " and the "Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung" among others . His essay writing is not free from anti-Semitic remarks and his remarks on racial anthropology occasionally make the author appear suspicious. But the author's emphatic plea for 'racial mixing', for sexual and cultural hybridization, brought him into opposition to the racial purity doctrine that prevailed in German colonialism and then also in the Nazi movement. In the course of his political development, under the influence of Wilson's idea of ​​the League of Nations, Müller changed from a supporter of imperialism to a representative of supranational, imperial ideas. These amount to an internationalization of the European colonies and include the vision of a global, hybrid culture.

Müller made his literary debut in April 1912 in the magazine Der Brenner with the story The Gray . The first independent literary publication followed in 1914, the short story Irmelin Rose , which is said to have been written as early as 1908. The focus of the drama Die Politiker des Geistes (1917) is an activist politician. The novel The Barbarian Leads to North America , published in 1920 . Müller's novel Camera obscura (1921) takes place in the middle of the 20th century in a world that is combined into an imperial confederation. In his literary culture picture Flibustier (1922), Müller processed experiences of war and predicted the bankruptcy of Literaria AG.

Two works established Müller's reputation as a representative of a radical exoticism that also deserves the interest of post-colonial literary studies: the essayistic novel Tropen is considered the main work . The myth of the trip. Certificates from a German engineer. Published by Robert Müller in 1915 . He describes the fruitless treasure hunt of three adventurers in the Amazon region. The novel takes a critical look at the topoi of trivial exotic literature in the tradition of Pierre Loti. The protagonist is the German engineer Hans Brandlberger, who is driven, among other things, by the desire to found an empire and a new hybrid race with the Indians in the tropical jungle. In the end, rebellious Indians kill him. The setting for the novel The Island Girl (1919) is a colony in the Pacific that is administered by a Portuguese governor on behalf of an international community. This is confronted with rebellious islanders and fights the uprisings with armed force. In addition, it imposes a ban on sexual relations between indigenous people and representatives of the colonial power. The protagonist of the novella is the Belgian inspector Raoul de Donckhard. He becomes the victim of a political intrigue by the governor, who has an island girl brought to him with blackmail intent.

Works

  • Irmelin Rose. The myth of the big city. Saturn-Verlag Hermann Meister, Heidelberg 1914
  • Karl Kraus or Dalai Lama, the dark priest. A nerve killing. Self-published, Vienna April 1914 (series: Torpedo. Monthly for Greater Austrian Culture and Politics. Ed. Robert Müller. No. 1, no more published).
  • Power. Psychopolitical Foundations of the Current Atlantic War. Schmidt, Munich 1915
  • Tropics. The myth of the trip. Certificates from a German engineer. Published by Robert Müller in 1915. Hugo Schmidt, Munich 1915. Various new editions, occasionally with the omission of parts of the subtitles, most recently in 2007: ISBN 3866402023 (without explanation). The Reclam ed. 1993 ISBN 3150089271 with additions by Ed. Günter Helmes: 1. Bibliograph. Notes on "Tropics" (p. 405), 2. an explanatory essay as an afterword (p. 407–438). As the basis of the Reclam edition, see the editions of Igel-Verlag (first edition 1990, see below) ISBN 3927104116
  • What does Austria expect from its young heir to the throne? Munich, Schmidt (1915)
  • Austria and the people. A mysticism of the Danube Alpine man. S. Fischer, Berlin 1916. Collection of writings on contemporary history, 18
  • European ways. In the struggle for type. Essays. S. Fischer, Berlin 1917. Collection of writings on contemporary history, Vol. 30/31
  • The politicians of the mind. Seven situations. ibid. 1917
  • The island girl. Novella. Roland, A. Mundt, Munich 1919
  • The barbarian. Novel. Reiss, Berlin 1920. Cover drawing by Kurt Szafranski .
  • Bolshevik and gentleman. ibid. 1920
  • Camera obscura. ibid. 1921
  • Flibustier . A cultural image. Interterritorialer Verlag "Renaissance", Vienna et al. 1922. Cover drawing after Josef Tengler
  • Races, cities, physiognomies. Cultural-historical aspects. Erich Reiss, Berlin 1923

Work edition

A work edition edited by Günter Helmes in individual volumes is published by Igel-Verlag Literatur in Paderborn (place of publication today: Hamburg) (1990ff.).

  • Tropics. The Myth of the Journey (1990; 3rd edition 2010)
  • Camera obscura (1991)
  • Races, Cities, Physiognomies (1992)
  • Flibustier (1992)
  • The Barbarian (1993)
  • Irmelin Rose / Bolschewik und Gentleman and other scattered texts (1993) (also: Das Grauen , April 1, 1912, pp. 53–69)
  • Critical Writings I (1993; 2nd edition 2011)
  • The Island Girl (1994)
  • Collected Essays (1995)
  • Critical Writings II (1995)
  • Critical Writings III (1996)
  • The Politicians of the Mind (1994)
  • Letters and Scattered Things (1997)
  • Paralipomena (2019)

literature

(Alphabetical)

  • Anonymous: Müller, Robert. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 6, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1975, ISBN 3-7001-0128-7 , p. 426.
  • Stephan Dietrich: Poetics of Paradox. On Robert Müller's fictional prose . Carl Böschen Verlag , Siegen 1997
  • Michael C. Frank: The Exoticism of Robert Müller's Tropics (1915). Encounter with a strange novel . In: Aleida Assmann, Michael C. Frank (eds.): Forgotten texts. (= Texts on world literature; vol. 5). Universitätsverlag Konstanz, Konstanz 2004, ISBN 3-87940-787-8 , pp. 187-206.
  • Stephanie Heckner : The tropics as trope. On Robert Müller's theory of poetry . (= Literature in history, history in literature; vol. 21). Böhlau, Vienna and Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-205-05353-2 (also dissertation, Univ. Munich 1991)
  • Günter Helmes: Robert Müller. Topics and tendencies of his journalistic writings (1912–1924). With excursions on biography and on the interpretation of the fictional texts . Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 1986, ISBN 3-8204-9762-5 . Unchanged reprint Igel, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86815-536-5 .
  • Günter Helmes: "The conception goes through our brain". The creation of ›New York‹ in Robert Müller's cycle "Manhattan" (1923) . In: Yearbook on Culture and Literature of the Weimar Republic, Vol. 19, 2018, pp. 127–152, ISBN 978-3-86916-666-7 .
  • Thomas Köster: picture book big city. Studies on the work of Robert Müller . Igel, Paderborn 1995.
  • Helmut Kreuzer , Günter Helmes (ed.): Expressionism - Activism - Exotism. Studies of the literary work of Robert Müller 1887–1924. With contemporary reception documents and a bibliography . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, ISBN 3-525-20750-6 (2nd edition: Igel, Paderborn 1989, ISBN 3-927104-05-1 ).
  • Christian Liederer: Man and his reality. Anthropology and reality in the poetic work of the expressionist Robert Müller . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2819-8 .
  • Robert Musil : Robert Müller . In: Collected Works, Vol. 8. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1978, ISBN 3-499-30008-7 , pp. 1131–1137
  • Bettina Pflaum: Political Expressionism. Activism in the fictional work of Robert Müller . Igel, Hamburg 2008
  • Paul Raabe , Ingrid Hannich-Bode: The authors and books of literary expressionism. A bibliographic manual. 2nd Edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-476-00756-1 .
  • Wolfgang Reif: Flight from civilization and literary dream dreams. The exotic novel in the first quarter of the 20th century . Metzler, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-476-00309-4 .
  • Ernst Arthur Rutra: Robert Müller. Thought speech. Hans von Weber, Munich 1925.
  • Thomas Schwarz: Robert Müller's Tropics. A travel guide to imperial exoticism. Synchron science publisher of the authors, Heidelberg 2006.
  • Thomas Schwarz: »Mead is a crazy substance«. Roberts Müller's tropical delirium. In: Katharina Manojlovic / Kerstin Putz (eds.): In the intoxication of writing. From Musil to Bachmann. Profiles. Magazine of the Austrian Literature Archives, Vol. 24. Zsolnay, Vienna 2017, pp. 218–241.
  • Armin A. Wallas:  Müller, Robert. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 473 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Hubert Zunzer: Jack Slim, the affect person and brain person. The design of the "New Man" in Robert Müller's programmatic novels "Tropen" and "Camera obscura" , University of Vienna, Vienna 1999.

Web links

Wikisource: Robert Müller  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Robert Müller  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

notes

  1. ^ Title edition of the first edition, old publisher name "Wien, West-Ost-Verlag" pasted over.
  2. ↑ Contents: The German; The Jew; The oriental; The americano; Vienna; Manhattan; The man of letters; A lieutenant; Slider.
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, journalist and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 1924
Place of death Vienna