Rudolf Müller (teacher)

Rudolf Müller (born March 31, 1856 in Friedrichshafen , † August 27, 1922 in Stuttgart ) was a German teacher . With the book "History of the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention" published in 1897, he became the first biographer of Henry Dunant , the founder of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate with whom he was personally friends. His work made a decisive contribution to the rehabilitation of Henry Dunant, who was living withdrawn and impoverished at the time of publication.

Life

During a walk in Stuttgart in the summer of 1877, Rudolf Müller met the Swiss founder of the Red Cross movement, Henry Dunant , who was also living in Stuttgart at the time, while he was still a student at the University of Tübingen . Both of them had been close friends since that meeting, and Rudolf Müller was one of Dunant's closest confidants until his death in 1910.

From 1893, at that time as a high school professor at the Royal Realgymnasium in Stuttgart (today Dillmann-Gymnasium ), Rudolf Müller wrote the book “History of the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention” in collaboration with Dunant. The work was published four years later by the Stuttgart publishing house Greiner & Pfeiffer and made a decisive contribution to the rehabilitation of Henry Dunant's reputation and recognition of his role as the founder of the Red Cross. It is still considered one of the most important historical sources for the emergence of the Red Cross movement.

In 1900 he also wrote a two-part letter to Björnstjerne Björnson , a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, for Henry Dunant to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . A year later, Dunant received the award together with the French pacifist Frédéric Passy . According to traditional correspondence, this letter was most likely decisive in changing Björnson's attitude to the interpretation of Alfred Nobel's will that made it possible for Henry Dunant to receive the award.

The letter was published as part of the brochure "Henri Dunant's Work for Peace" by the Norwegian military doctor Hans Daae and was the first comprehensive account of Henry Dunant's life's work. Through this letter and his book, Rudolf Müller became Henry Dunant's first biographer . The extensive correspondence between the two has been handed down by Rudolf Müller's son and has been available for research since 1975.

literature

• Willy Heudtlass, Walter Gruber: J. Henry Dunant. Founder of the Red Cross, originator of the Geneva Convention. A biography in documents and pictures. Fourth edition. Verlag Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-17-008670-7