Johannes von Müller

Johannes von Müller (3 January 1752 – 29 May 1809) was a Swiss historian.

Biography

He was born in

In April 1772 he passed his theological examination, and soon after became a professor of Greek at the Collegium Humanitatis in Schaffhausen. He then began to devote his leisure hours to the investigation of Swiss chronicles and documents. Early in 1774, on the advice of his friend Charles Victor de Bonstetten, he gave up this post and became tutor in the Tronchin family at Geneva. However, in 1775 he also resigned this position, and passed his time with various friends, such as Francis Kinloch from South Carolina, in Geneva and Vaud; all that while engaged in carrying his historical scheme into effect. Having accumulated much material, he began the actual composition of his work in the spring of 1776, and the printing in the summer of 1777. But difficulties arose with the censor, and matters came to a standstill.

In 1778–1779 Müller delivered a set of lectures on

At Vienna he spent many years, becoming chief librarian of the imperial library in 1800, and in 1795 he issued Vol. III (to 1443) of his Swiss history. In 1804 he became historiographer, war councillor, and member of the Academy at Berlin. In 1805, Vol. IV (to 1475) of his Swiss history appeared. He edited the works of Herder, and wrote various treatises for the Academy, including Über die Geschichte Friedrich's II (On the history of Frederick II).

In 1802/03 a protégé, Fritz von Hartenberg, cheated Müller out of his entire fortune in a homosexual scandal. The young man faked love letters from a Hungarian Count Batthyány and declared his love for Müller. The scandal and political intrigue, during which Müller narrowly avoided a morality suit, became known as the Hartenberg Affair. Müller's love letters to the supposed Batthyány are an important window on same-sex desire in Goethe's time.^[1]

In 1806 he became strongly inclined towards

Müller's works were published under the care of his brother Johann Georg Müller (1759–1819), pupil of Johann Gottfried Herder at Tübingen, in 27 volumes (1810–1819), and re-issued, in 40 volumes, at Stuttgart (1831–1835). Vols. 1-3 contain a revised, but unfinished, German version of Müller's Universal History. The Swiss History was re-issued at Leipzig and Zurich, in 15 volumes (1824–1853), with continuations by Robert Glutz-Blotzheim (to 1517), J. J. Hottinger (to 1531), Louis Vulliemin (to 1712), and Charles Monnard (to 1815). A French translation of the German edition (as above) appeared, in 18 volumes, at Paris and Geneva (1837–1851).

Important minor works are Essais historiques, published in French under the auspices of

Müller's letters to Füsslin (1771–1807) were issued at Zürich (1812), and those to Charles Bonnet, etc., at Stuttgart (1835). Many letters addressed to him by various friends were published by Maurer-Constant, in 6 volumes (Schaffhausen, 1839–1840); and those written to him by his brother (1770–1809), Johann Georg Müller, appeared, under the editorship of Eduard Haug and André Weibel, at Frauenfeld (2 vols., 1893) and Göttingen (6 volumes 2009-2011).

References

• New International Encyclopedia
  (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
• Ripley, George; Dana, Charles A., eds. (1879). "Müller, Johannes von" .
  The American Cyclopædia
  .
• Baynes, T. S.; Smith, W. R., eds. (1884). "Müller, Johann von" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (9th ed.). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
  William Augustus Brevoort Coolidge (1911). "Müller, Johannes von". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica
  (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This work in turn cites the biographies by Heeren (1809), Döring (1835) and Monnard (1839); and biographies in G. v. Wyss's Geschichte der Historiographie in der Schweiz (Zürich, 1895), pp. 305–311, and in the Festschrift der Stadt Schaffhausen (Schaffhausen, 1891), pt. v. pp. 83–99. It also notes that F. Schwarz's pamphlet, J. von Müller und seine Schweizergeschichte (Bâle, 1884), traces the genesis of the Swiss History.
• Biographies by Karl Henking (1909–28) (to 1804), Karl Schib (1967) and Matthias Pape (1989) (1793–1807)
• Gordon A. Craig, “Johannes von Müller: The Historian in Search of a Hero,” in: The American Historical Review 74 (1969), pp. 1487–1502.

• "Müller, Johannes von" . The Nuttall Encyclopædia. 1907.
• "Müller, Johannes von" . Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.