Werner Müller (chemist)

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Werner Müller (born December 18, 1923 in Wilhelmshaven ; † January 14, 2005 in Detmold ) was a German chemist and art historian.

Live and act

Müller grew up in Hanover and Celle . He went to school in Celle. Even in his early school years, his interests were in architecture, music and history. On the other hand, there were his deficits in sport and, as a result, his distant relationship to the military drill and National Socialism.

After graduating from high school in 1942, Müller was drafted into the Wehrmacht and returned to Germany from the Soviet Union at the end of 1943 . He then began studying chemistry at the University of Göttingen , which he was not able to continue until 1947 and graduated with a diploma in 1955. A year later, Mueller received his doctorate with a thesis on the photochemistry Dr. rer. nat. under Professor Günther Otto Schenck (1913–2003). Müller was particularly impressed by the brilliant lectures given by Robert Wichard Pohl (1884–1976), professor of experimental physics and one of the founders of solid state physics . Pohl's aesthetic art of representing physical laws fell on fertile ground with Werner Müller and would later develop in completely different fields of knowledge. From 1956 to 1988 he worked as a chemist in various areas of the BASF Ludwigshafen plant .

In 1966, after a long illness, Müller's wife died, which resulted in a profound change in their lives for him and his two children and initially practically put an end to his research. It was not until 1968, after his marriage to Annemarie Kleine, that he published his first essay on the history of stereotomy , which can be described as the second beginning of his research career in the field of the history of technology and art.

In the 1970s and 1980s he published numerous articles on technical and aesthetic issues of the late Gothic in magazines and yearbooks on building history, the history of technology, art history and monument preservation. With the art teacher and painter Gunther Vogel, Werner Müller published the first edition of the two-volume “dtv-Atlas zur Baukunst” in 1974, which saw numerous editions and became a bestseller. Werner Müller achieved a unique synthesis of the history of technology, science and art with his monograph "Basics of Gothic Building Technology" published in 1990

In 1993 he received the prestigious annual award of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences for his publications.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the complex, computer-designed pipe systems at BASF's Ludwigshafen plant inspired Werner Müller to think about using computers to reconstruct historical vaults geometrically. As early as 1976 he published an essay with Klaus Hänisch on the possibility of a computer-generated spatial representation of figured vaults of the German late Gothic. The paperback “Artwork, Art History and Computer” published by Deutscher Kunstverlag in 1987 can be interpreted as Werner Müller's program writing. There he opened up new ways for the reception of the work of art, hardly noticed by traditional art history at the time, with the aim of making the work of art changeable within the framework of the educational laws on which his design was based. According to Müller, the computer not only allows the spatial visualization of works that have remained draft, but can also serve to design and represent completely new works in the spirit of a particular artist. He worked on the implementation of this program with the mathematician Norbert Quien from the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) at Heidelberg University . With computer graphics, Müller and Quien systematically developed Gothic building technology and architecture, whereby their primary aim was to visualize the formation processes of late Gothic vaults using IT .

In the last years of his life, Werner Müller turned to the research of stonemasonry and stonemason geometry between Gothic and Baroque with the help of computer graphics. Werner Müller could not finish his reflections on the geometrical world view of the Nordic Renaissance . And so his book manuscript, which was completed at the end of 2004, “Virtual stone masonry of the Austrian and Bohemian-Saxon late Gothic. The vault drafts of Codex miniatus 3 of the Austrian National Library in Vienna “appear posthumously.

Werner Müller left behind an extensive body of work on the history of stereotomy in Central Europe, France and Italy, on the technological comparison of styles between German late Gothic and German baroque with special consideration of the stonemasonry, on the relationship between the history of technology and the history of art, on the computer-aided vault designs of the German, Austrian and Bohemian Saxon late Gothic and finally to the technique of anamorphosis .

Works

  • Werner Müller: The authencity of Guarini's stereotomy in his architettura civile. In: Journal of Architectural Historians. Volume 27, No. 3, 1968, pp. 203-208.
  • Werner Müller: The relationship between stereotomy and aesthetics at Frézier and his vault designs for Landau and Großbockenheim. In: History of Technology. Volume 36, 1969, pp. 277-290.
  • Werner Müller: The position of the portals of the Austrian style Borrominiano in the history of stone carving. In: Leaves for the history of technology. Volume 32/33, 1970/1971, pp. 129-147.
  • Werner Müller: The elliptical basket arch in architectural theory from Dürer to Frézier. In: History of Technology. Volume 38, 1971, pp. 92-106.
  • Werner Müller: Technical architectural drawings of the German late Gothic. In: History of Technology. Volume 40, 1973, pp. 281-300.
  • Werner Müller: Influences of the Austrian and the Bohemian-Saxon Late Gothic in the vault patterns of Jacob Facht von Andernach. In: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte. Volume 27, 1974, pp. 65-82.
  • Werner Müller: The survival of Gothic traditions in Upper German stonemasonry from the late 16th to the 18th century . In: History of Technology. Volume 43, 1976, pp. 268-281.
  • Werner Müller: The star vault of the Lorenz Hall Choir. Its position within the late Gothic vault constructions. In: Nuremberg research. Volume 20, 1977, pp. 171-196.
  • Werner Müller: Architecture and Mathematics. In: Ulrich Schütte (Ed.): Architect & Engineer. Builder in War & Peace. (= Exhibition catalogs of the Herzog August Library. No. 42). Waisenhaus-Buchdruckerei und Verlag, Braunschweig 1984, ISBN 3-88373-040-8 , pp. 94-109.
  • Werner Müller: artwork, art history and computers. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-422-06007-3 .
  • Werner Müller: Architects in the ancient world. Köhler & Amelung, Leipzig 1989, ISBN 3-7338-0096-6 .
  • Werner Müller: Basics of Gothic building technology: ars sine scientia nihil . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-422-06055-3 .
  • Werner Müller, Norbert Quien: From special German Gothic: architectural photography, computer graphics, interpretation. Koerner, Baden-Baden 1997, ISBN 3-87320-433-9 .
  • Werner Müller, Norbert Quien: Invented forms, calculated images. Germany's late Gothic spatial art in a new perspective. Publishing house and database for the humanities (VDG), Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-89739-108-2 .
  • Werner Müller, Norbert Quien: Bohemian Baroque Gothic. Architectural consideration as a computer-aided style criticism. Publishing house and database for the humanities (VDG), Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-89739-129-5 .
  • Werner Müller: stonemason geometry between late Gothic and baroque. A construction technique on the way from craft to engineering. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2002, ISBN 3-935590-21-0 .
  • Werner Müller: From Guarini to Balthasar Neumann. To understand baroque spatial art. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2002, ISBN 3-935590-44-X .
  • Werner Müller: Baroque room fantasies. built reality and constructed appearance. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2004, ISBN 3-935590-81-4 .

literature

  • Karl-Eugen Kurrer : Werner Müller. Obituary. In: Arch +. Volume 38, No. 175, 2005, p. 11. (archplus.net)
  • Karl-Eugen Kurrer: Werner Müller †. In: Masonry. 9th vol., H. 3, 2005, pp. 121-122.

proof

  1. ↑ Werner Müller: Investigations on the chemistry of some photosensitized reactions. Dissertation. University of Göttingen v. July 21, 1956.
  2. ↑ Werner Müller: The Authencity of Guarini's Stereotomy in his architettura civile. In: Journal of Architectural Historians. Volume 27, No. 3, 1968, pp. 203-208.
  3. ↑ Werner Müller, Gunther Vogel: Atlas of architecture. 2 volumes. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1974.
  4. ↑ Werner Müller: Basics of Gothic construction technology: ars sine scientia nihil. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-422-06055-3 .
  5. ^ Werner Müller: Artwork, Art History and Computer . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-422-06007-3 .
  6. ↑ Werner Müller, Norbert Quien: Virtual stonemasonry of the Austrian and Bohemian-Saxon late Gothic. The vault designs of Codex Miniatus 3 of the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2005, ISBN 3-937251-03-0 .
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilhelmshaven
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 2005
Place of death Detmold