Truths. Prodosh Aich
in 1812. We take note that Berlin is far off from Anhalt- Dessau and more expensive than the nearer off university at Leipzig. Six months later, however, Wilhelm joined the Prussian army in the “War of Liberation” against Napoleon, who was retreating from his disastrous invasion of Russia. Within a year, Wilhelm Müller became a lieutenant at the age just over nineteen. On his tour of duty, he stayed in Brussels where he got involved in a love affair that ended badly.
Wilhelm Müller resumed his studies at the University in Berlin in 1814. He completed his studies in 1817 there. While studying he discovered his affinity to cultural activities. He visited literary circles. He wrote also his own verses. He fell in love with the poetess Louise Hensel, who encouraged him in his writer-career but did not return his affections and love. He had also joined the Berliner Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (Berlin Society for the German language). Thus he got the chance to travel to Greece, Egypt and the Middle East with the Prussian chamberlain Baron Sack. Unfortunately, because of the plague in Constantinople they stopped off in Italy. Around Easter, he parted from Baron Sack because he wanted to stay on in Italy, went to Naples and spent the summer in Rome.
On his return from Italy, he was appointed as a teacher of classic languages at Dessau in 1818. Then he took up the job of an assistant librarian in the ducal library in Dessau. A year later, he became a librarian of the small Duchy having a population of maximum 60,000 as we remember. As a librarian, however, he became a part of the administration of the Duchy though on the bottom line to begin with. He was then twenty-five.
Wilhelm Müller, being the son of a poor tailor, thus arrived at the threshold of the entry to the “high society” of Anhalt-Dessau. He made friends in circles engaged in cultural activities also outside Anhalt-Dessau. Franz Schubert will set two of his verses to music: Die Winterreise (The winter trip) and Die schöne Müllerin (The miller's beautiful wife). These two songs are played even today. Max Müller will proudly mention this in his Auld Lang Syne, published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London and Bombay in 1898 (p.42), i.e. two years before his death. Auld Lang Syne is one of our primary sources to reconstruct the real life of Friedrich Maximilian Müller.
In 1821 Wilhelm Müller, when he was 27 years old, entered into a love-match marriage with Adelheid Basedow. She was then 21 years old. Adelheid belonged to a more prominent family, a few ladder higher in the ranking of social-prestige-scale than Wilhelm, in Anhalt-Dessau. The family Basedow did not approve this love-marriage. The newly married couple got thus socially isolated.
Adelheid was granddaughter of Johann Bernard Basedow (1723-1790). He was born at Hamburg in 1723, as the son of a barber and wigmaker. However, we do not know how, he managed to come to Leipzig as a student of theology, but gave himself up entirely to the study of philology, i.e. classic-languages. In 1752 he wrote a thesis: "On the best and hitherto unknown method of teaching children of noblemen", and obtained the degree of Master of Arts from the University at Kiel in the northern part of present Germany. Why at Kiel and not at Leipzig, we do not know. The documents kept in the archives are comparatively rather meagre. He was not that important personality as Max Müller will proudly refer to Johann Bernard Basedow after hundred and eighty years in his Auld Lang Syne and in his My Autobiography published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London and Bombay.
Johann Bernard Basedow evolved to a “pedagogic reformer”. The Duke of Anhalt-Dessau, Wilhelm Leopold III welcomed him to implement his pedagogic ideas in his small Duchy. In 1774 Johann Bernard Basedow was permitted to set up a school, called Philanthropinum, in Anhalt-Dessau. “Philanthropinum” is derived from Greek and means “friend of mankind”. As simple-minded persons, we do not quite comprehend this “pedagogic reform”. We consider only facts and facts behind the facts. And, these are these.
The school opened in December 1774. The motto was, so it is said, "everything according to nature". Rich and poor were to be educated together. The curriculum was practically-based and conducted in German (rather than Latin or Greek), handicrafts were taught, there was an emphasis on games and physical exercise, and school uniform was made simple and more comfortable, so it is handed-down. The facts behind these facts are: The school was open to the children of nobles only. Yet the performances of his first pupils profoundly impressed observers. However, Johann Bernard Basedow’s heavy drinking and emotional outbursts drove away the best teachers from Philanthropinum. In 1784 Johann Bernard Basedow disconnected himself from the school, the Philanthropinum, in Anhalt-Dessau.
Adelheid’s father Ludwig Basedow (1774 – 1835) studied law at Frankfurt University. He returned to Anhalt-Dessau and joined 1807 the Anhalt-Dessau-Administration. In 1814, he then joined the Law Administration of Prussia. Anhalt-Dessau and Prussia were then having Tax disputes. Ludwig Basedow found a mutually accepted solution. Thereafter he got the job of the Head of the Administration of the small Duchy Anhalt-Dessau, still having a population of about maximum 60,000. He was later raised to the title of the lowest ranking heritable noble as Ludwig von Basedow in 1833, only two years before he expired in 1835.
Adelheid could not enjoy the social privileges of eventually being Adelheid von Basedow unlike her two elder brothers. As we recall, she had married Wilhelm Müller in 1821, long before her father was raised to the nobles in 1833. None the less, she belonged to a well to do bourgeois family in Anhalt-Dessau, already a bourgeois in the third generation. She was socially marginalized when she married Wilhelm Müller, who was just on the threshold of climbing the ladder to the class of the bourgeois, and that against the approval of her family.
Being a librarian of the Duchy Wilhelm Müller became a “Hofrat”, a title at the bottom line of a higher carrier-scale of Anhalt-Dessau administration. But he was challenged to excel. Adelheid was proud and ambitious. She pushed him. We know nothing about the education of Adelheid. She encouraged Wilhelm Müller to establish himself as a poet and as a writer and did everything she could to help her husband. Wilhelm Müller started impressively. He undertook many cultural trips together with Adelheid whenever he found a chance in his leisure times being a librarian. This was absolutely necessary to getting known in cultural circles outside Anhalt-Dessau.
Wilhelm Müller prospered. But this exercise was strenuous and exhausting as well. He would have probably become a part of the “society” in Anhalt-Dessau as a poet and as a writer. As ill luck would have it, Wilhelm Müller expired while he was just on the verge of becoming a celebrated personality as a poet and as a writer.
In July, 1827 Wilhelm Müller fell ill. Five days later, after he fell ill, he died of an attack in his sleep, just before his thirty-third birthday. Adelheid Müller was then 27 years old, Auguste 5 and Friedrich Maximilian 3 and a half. His untimely death was surrounded by rumours of suicide or murder that persisted over the years which were not favourable for the mental balance and growth of the half-orphan Auguste and Friedrich Maximilian. More over the family was being left behind in poverty without any material resources.
These are the hard facts in regard to the family and social background of Friedrich Maximilian when he is three and half years old. A lot of myths have been written and printed on and about Friedrich Maximilian Müller by Max Müller, by his British wife Georgina Max Müller, and by his son W. G. Max Müller. We take liberty of a break to look a little ahead. We reproduce here an exemplary paragraph on the family background of Friedrich Maximilian Müller which has remained