Friedrich_Muller

Friedrich Muller (1749-1825), German poet, dramatist and painter, usually known as Maler (i.e. painter) Muller, was born at Kreuznach on the 13th of January 1749. He studied painting at ZweibrUcken, and in 1774-1775 settled in Mannheim, where in 1777 he was appointed court painter. In 1778 he was enabled by a public subscription to visit Italy, which remained his home for the rest of his life. In 1780 he became a Roman Catholic. He was unfavourably influenced by the study of Italian models, and gradually gave up painting and devoted himself to the study of the history of art; his services as cicerone were especially in demand among German visitors to Rome. Before he left Mannheim he had tried his hand at literature, under the influence of the Sturm and Drang movement. A lyric drama, Niobe (1778), attracted little attention; but Fausts Leben dramatisiert (1778) appealed to the turbulent spirit of the time, and Golo and Genoveva (begun in 1776, but not published till 1811) was an excellent imitation of Goethe's Gritz von Berlichingen. He struck out a more independent path in his idylls, notably Die Schafschur (1775) and Das Nusskernen (1811), in which, emancipating himself from the artificiality of Gessner, he reproduced scenes - not without a touch of satire - from the German peasant-life of his day. He died at Rome on the 23rd of April 1825.

Maler Miiller's Werke appeared in 3 vols. (1811-1825); in 1868 H. Hettner published two volumes of Dichtungen von Maier Muller, which contain most of his writings. Gedichte von Maler Friedrich 'Willer; eine Nachlese zu dessen Werken appeared in 1873, and his Fausts Leben was reprinted by B. Seuffert in 1881. See A. Sauer, "Sturmer and Dranger," vol. iii. (Kurschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur, vol. 81,1883); and B. Seuffert, Maier Muller (1877).