Mourning for Prof. Dr. Winfried Müller (January 31, 1953 - February 25, 2025)
Winfried Müller passed away unexpectedly in Munich on February 25, 2025. We are stunned and mourn the loss of a highly esteemed colleague, committed and approachable university lecturer and dear person. With his sincerity, wonderful friendliness and fine sense of humor, he enriched the Institute of History and TU Dresden for two decades and remained closely associated with the Institute and all of us even after his retirement. Our deepest sympathy goes to his wife and family!
Winfried Müller held the Chair of Saxon Regional History at TU Dresden from 1999 to 2018 and was also Director of the non-university Institute of History and Folklore of Saxony (ISGV) from 2000 to 2020. As the successor to Karlheinz Blaschke, who held the newly founded chair from 1992 to 1998, Müller played a key role in the further establishment and development of regional history in Dresden and Saxony. This should be particularly emphasized, as regional history had only a shadowy existence during the GDR era and with Blaschke, a regional historian was appointed to the TU Dresden after reunification, who first had to revive the older traditions of regional history in Saxony and carry out a wide range of groundwork. Müller, who came to Saxony from Bavaria via the Rhineland, opened up new horizons for Saxon regional history, in particular by covering the saddle period, the 19th century and later the 20th century as an (early) modern historian. Topics included school and university history, the Enlightenment and reform with a particular focus on the 'Third Germany', historical jubilee culture, the history of Upper Lusatia, the urban history of Dresden, the reform and homeland movements around 1900 and finally the history of cinema. In these and other fields, he has also successfully accompanied numerous students in their own research.
Born on January 31, 1953 in Grafrath/Upper Bavaria, Müller graduated from high school in Fürstenfeldbruck in 1973 and went on to study history, German studies and politics at the LMU Munich. After his first state examination and Magister Artium in 1980, he completed his doctorate in 1983 with a dissertation under Laetitia Böhm on the subject of "Universität und Orden. The Bavarian State University of Ingolstadt between the Dissolution of the Jesuit Order and Secularization 1773-1803". He then worked at the Institute for Education and University History at LMU and completed his habilitation in 1991 with the thesis "Schulpolitik in Bayern im Spannungsfeld von Kultusbürokratie und Militärregierung 1945-1949". This was followed by professorships in Munich (Medieval History and Regional History) and finally, from 1997, in Bonn (Modern History), where he taught until his appointment to Dresden.
In addition to the chair and ISGV, Müller headed the sub-project "Das historische Jubiläum. Genesis, Organizational Performance and Staging History of an Institutional Mechanism" in the CRC 537 "Institutionality and Historicity" and from 2009 to 2014 the sub-project "Discourses of Common Sense and Religious Characterization between the Late Enlightenment and the Vormärz (ca. 1770-1830)" in the CRC 804 "Transcendence and Common Sense". In addition, there is the history of cinema, which he researched in a major project at the ISGV from 2018 to 2020, as well as a catalog of German artist's stone drawings, a central project of recent years, which he completed in 2019 with a lavishly equipped monograph. Also worth mentioning is his involvement in the preparation of the 47th German Historians' Day "Inequalities" (Dresden 2008) as well as his collaboration on the 3rd Saxon State Exhibition "Via regia - 800 Years of Movement and Encounter" (Görlitz 2011) and the 1st Brandenburg State Exhibition "Prussia and Saxony. Scenes of a Neighborhood" (Doberlug 2014). He was a member of the Historical Commission at the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, the Commission for Bavarian Regional History at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich and other scientific associations and committees, as well as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Sorbian Institute in Bautzen and Chairman of the Dresden Historical Association for many years.
I first encountered Winfried Müller personally as a young professor during my time as a student in Bonn in courses ranging from the constitutional history of the Holy Roman Empire to the (German and European) Enlightenment and the history of England. Shortly afterwards, he wrote a reader on the Enlightenment in the "Encyclopaedia of German History" series, which is still worth reading due to its broad approach to intellectual history, society and politics. Of course, it never occurred to me at the time that I would one day become his successor in Dresden. So it was all the nicer to meet Winfried Müller again twenty years later and get to know him better as an impressive person. We were particularly connected by our passion for cinema, which we lived out together in two film series organized for the ISGV - "Als die Bilder sprechen lernten. Dresden cinema culture between silent and sound film" (2019/20) and "With Viktor Klemperer in the cinema" (2021/22). I can hardly imagine a more ideal predecessor in both positions at the TU Dresden and the ISGV: Winfried Müller opened all doors for me, arranged many positions on advisory boards and committees, left his younger students as new employees and advised and accompanied me in many ways in the many new tasks - and all this without imposing anything on me. Instead, in his polite, reserved and appreciative manner, he discreetly signaled his willingness to help and then waited until I approached him and asked for advice. Letting go is an art that not many people in the academic world have mastered. Winfried Müller was able to do this and at the same time continued to be very present and highly valued through his current research contributions and participation in events.
It is tragic that he has now had to let go of life so suddenly, as he was in the middle of it and had written to me just a few days ago after his birthday that we would certainly see each other again at the beginning of March in the Klemperer Hall of the SLUB - at another ISGV movie night. It fills me with deep sadness that this will no longer happen.
In Winfried Müller, Saxon regional history has lost one of its most important personalities of recent decades. The Chair of Saxon Regional History, the Institute of History and the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science at TU Dresden will always honor his memory.
Andreas Rutz, February 26, 2025