Johannes von Müller

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

He was born at Schaffhausen, where his father was a clergyman and rector of the gymnasium. In his youth, his maternal grandfather, Johannes Schoop (1696–1757), roused in him an interest in the history of his country. At the age of eight he is said to have written a history of Schaffhausen, and at eleven he knew the names and dates of all the kings of the four great monarchies. His ardour for historical studies was further stimulated by Schlözer, when Müller went (1769–1771) to the University of Göttingen, nominally to study theology. In July 1771 he undertook a sketch of Swiss history for a publisher of Halle, but his theological studies and the preparation of a Latin dissertation on the Bellum cimbricum (publ. in 1772) prevented much progress.

In April 1772 he passed his theological examination, and soon after became professor of Greek at the Collegium Humanitatis in Schaffhausen. He now 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. But in 1775 he resigned this position also, and passed his time with various friends, as Francis Kinloch from South Carolina, in Geneva and Vaud, 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 universal history (revised between 1782 and 1784), which were published as Vierundzwanzig Bücher allgemeiner Geschichte in 1811, and often republished. In 1780 the first volume (extending to 1388) of his Geschichten der Schweizer appeared, nominally at Boston (to avoid the censor), though really at Bern; and it was well received. In 1781 he published at Berlin, in French, his Essais historiques. During his visit to Berlin, he had an interview with Frederick the Great from whom he had hoped to obtain an office, but he did not receive it. He was on his way back to Switzerland when the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) named him professor of history. He stayed at Kassel till 1783, publishing in 1782 his Reisen der Päpste, a book wherein certain leanings towards Romanism are visible, also his distrust of emperor Joseph II's hegemonial politics.

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