Max Müller

Friedrich Max Müller (in the UK known as Max Müller and in India as Max Mueller, born December 6, 1823 in Dessau, † October 28, 1900 in Oxford ) was a German - language and religious scholars. Under his leadership, the Sacred Books of the East, a 50 -volume set of English translations of Asian sacred books were published.

Life and work

Müller was a son of the poet Wilhelm Müller, whose texts were set to music The Beautiful Miller and Winterreise by Franz Schubert, among others, in the song cycles. He attended St. Nicholas School in Leipzig and then the local University of Leipzig, where he studied philology and philosophy, but next to it also dealt with Arabic and Sanskrit. He has already published a translation of the Hitopadeca (Leipzig 1844). He then went to Berlin. In the winter semester 1844/45 he studied there, along with Paul de Lagarde, Persian Friedrich Rückert. 1845, Mr. Müller to Paris and a year later to England.

Here he published on behalf of the English East India Company the Rigveda with a detailed commentary of Sayana (6 vols, London 1849-1874 ). In addition, he was also an issue without comment out (London, 1877 ) and the first volume of a translation Rig Veda' - Sanhita, the sacred hymns of the Brahmans (London 1869). He convinced the East India Company with the argument that one must first examine the oldest Sanskrit texts in order to gain an insight into the development of Indian religious history can.

Since 1850, Müller worked in Oxford, where he was commissioned to hold at the University lectures on literary history and comparative grammar. In 1851 he was made an honorary member of the University and Christ Church College. In 1854, he received a full professorship for new languages ​​and literatures. In 1856 he joined the Board of Trustees of the Bodleian Library, where he also worked as a librarian for the Orientalist department 1865-1867. In 1858 he was elected a Fellow of All Souls College. 1868 founded the University of Oxford professor of comparative religion and appointed the first Professor Müller of this chair. This created a lot of unrest in the church hierarchy, who looked at the subject as a potential threat to the claim of Christianity to universality.

Müller analyzed mythologies and myths as awareness of natural phenomena, a kind of primitive advance science within the cultural development of mankind. He advocated a Darwinian view of the evolution of cultures. In the opinion of the miller "gods" began first as abstract concepts to work with whom you exchanged ideas or expressed. Only later were they personified. So were the Indo-European " Father God " many different names emerged: Zeus, Jupiter, Dyaus Pita. But one could reduce all these forms on the word dyaus which he took as "appearance" or "radiation". This word leads to deva, deus and theos as terms for God and for proper names Zeus and Jupiter (as deus - pater ). This idea later influenced Friedrich Nietzsche.

In the summer of 1872 he lectured in Strasbourg. In 1875 he resigned his professorship, but remained at the University to issue a series of translations of the sacred books of the East. By 1896, 41 volumes came out. In May 1896 Müller was appointed to the Privy Council. Friedrich Max Müller died on October 28, 1900 in Oxford.

His works are still used by students of Indology and Sanskrit research throughout the world. In India, Max Müller is popular to this day - that operate the German Goethe Institutes in India under the name " Max Mueller Bhavan ". As one of the first linguists, he advocated a planned language like Esperanto.

In addition, the novel was written by him (which is seen by some as rather long seal) German Love ( Kor. Dogilin - eui sarang ), which is one remarkably in Korea 's most widely read German literature. In Germany the novel, however, is completely unknown.

As a young linguist Müller had introduced the Sanskrit word " Aryan " mid-19th century as the name of a Indo -Germanic language group, but by the book Essai sur l' inégalité the Races Humaines Arthur de Gobineau ( 1816-1882 ) it became a synonym for the superior Nordic master race.

Schliemann and Troy

Mueller went into the scientific, then it was called comparative mythology, not a reference to reality, but the immanent laws of form of myths of different peoples and traditions. In Homer's Iliad Müller thought he could see a battle of the sun with the clouds as the actual topic and compared the Iliad with the Nibelungenlied, which he also denied a historical core. Even in Homer's Iliad had been no historical core, which had been trimmed from a non- real material. Rather, a non- real fabric of Homer had been taken subsequently with a historic site in conjunction.

When Müller and Heinrich Schliemann met in London, Schliemann had already read his Lectures on the Science of Language. Step by step succeeded Schliemann, dismantle Muller's dislike of the historicity of Homer's Troy, even though last reservations remained. Müller made ​​acceptable in return Schliemann in the scientific world of England.

Works

• The Mahâbhâshya, in: Journal of the German Oriental Society 7 (1853 ), 162-171. ( Digitized )
• Letter to Chevalier Bunsen on the classification of the Turanian languages ​​. London 1854
• German love. From the papers of a stranger. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1857
• Essay on comparative mythology. London 1858
• History of ancient Sanskrit literature. London 1859
• Lectures on the science of language, 2 series. London 1861-64 German edition: Lectures on the Science of Language. 2 vols. Mayer, Leipzig 1863/66; 3 A. Klinkhardt, Leipzig 1870/75

• German edition: an introduction to comparative religious studies. Trübner, Strasbourg 1874

• German edition: Lectures on the origin and evolution of religion. Trübner, Strasbourg 1880

• German edition: India in its world-historical importance. Engelmann, Leipzig 1884
• Part Edition: What can India teach us. Lotus, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86176-005-3

• German edition: The thinking in the light of the language. Engelmann, Leipzig 1888; Reprint: Minerva, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-86598-299-9

• German edition: Natural Religion. Engelmann, Leipzig 1890

• German edition: Physical religion. Engelmann, Leipzig 1892

• German edition: Anthropological religion. Engelmann, Leipzig 1894; Reprint: VDM, Saarbrücken, 2007 ISBN 978-3-8364-2417-2

• German edition: Theosophy or Psychological Religion. Engelmann, Leipzig 1895

• German edition: From My Life. Fragments on an autobiography. Perthes, Gotha 1902