Адам Генрих Мюллер: Жизнь и взгляды консервативного мыслителя

German publicist, literary critic, political economist, and theorist of the state

Adam Heinrich Müller (30 June 1779 – 17 January 1829; after 1827 Ritter von Nitterdorf) was a German Austrian conservative philosopher, literary critic, and political economist, working within the romantic tradition.

Müller was born in Berlin. It was intended that he should study Protestant theology, but from 1798 he devoted himself in Göttingen to the study of law, philosophy, and natural science. He was a student of Gustav Hugo. Returning to Berlin, he was persuaded by his friend Friedrich von Gentz to take up political science. He had early formed a close intimacy with Gentz, his elder by 15 years; and this connection exercised an important influence both on his material circumstances and his mental development in after life. The two men differed widely in character and in their fundamental principles, but agreed, at least in their later period, in their practical political aims, and the friendship was only terminated by death. Müller worked for some time as referendary in the Kurmärkische Kammer in Berlin. Müller's relations with the Junker party and his co operation with them in their opposition to Hardenberg's reforms made any public employment in Prussia impossible for him. He travelled in Sweden and Denmark, spent about two years in Poland, and then went to Vienna, where he was converted to the Catholic faith on 30 April 1805. Through Gentz he became acquainted with Metternich, to whom he was useful in the preparation of state papers. Via Poland, Müller traveled to Dresden, where he held lectures on German science and literature (1806), in which he showed himself to be a follower of Schlegel's romanticism.

From 1806 to 1809, he lived at Dresden occupied in the political education of Prince Bernhard of Saxe Weimar and lecturer on German literature, dramatic art, and political science. In 1808 he edited with Heinrich von Kleist the periodical Phoebus. Müller endeavoured to comprehend the connection between political and social science, and, while using the historical method, to base them upon philosophy and religion. With Edmund Burke, Friedrich von Gentz, Joseph de Maistre, and Karl Ludwig von Haller, he must be reckoned among the chief opponents of revolutionary ideas in politics. In his work, Von der Notwendigkeit einer theologischen Grundlage der gesamten Staatswissenschaften (On the necessity of a comprehensive theological foundation for political science, 1820), Müller rejects, like Haller (Restauration der Staatswissenschaften, 1816), the distinction between constitutional and civil law (common law), which rests entirely on the idea of the state's omnipotence. His ideal is medieval feudalism, on which the reorganization of modern political institutions should be modelled.

In the field of literature and aesthetics, Müller belongs to the Romantic school. He is a Romanticist even in his specialty, politics and political economy. As Eichendorff says in his Geschichte der poetischen Literatur Deutschlands (new ed., by W. Kosch, Kempten, 1906, p. 352), Müller "mapped out a domain of his own, the application of Romanticism to the social and political conditions of life." Carl Schmitt presented the view that "it is impossible to judge Müller's theory of the state as anything but a matter of aesthetics and style." Müller himself declares: "The reconciliation of science and art and of their noblest ideas with serious political life was the purpose of my larger works" (Vermischte Schriften, I, p. iii).

His position in political economy is defined by his strong opposition to Adam Smith's system of materialistic liberal (so called classical) political economy, or the so called industry system. He censures Smith as presenting a one sidedly material and individualistic conception of society, and as being too exclusively English in his views. Müller opposed free trade and strongly supported autarky. In contrast with the economical individualism of Adam Smith, he emphasizes the ethical element in national economy, the duty of the state toward the individual, and the religious basis which is also necessary in this field. Müller's importance in the history of political economy is acknowledged even by the opponents of his religious and political point of view. His reaction against Adam Smith, says Roscher (Geschichte der National Ökonomik, p. 763), "is not blind or hostile, but is important, and often truly helpful." Some of his ideas, freed from much of their alloy, are reproduced in the writings of the historical school of German economists. One of Müller's main contributions to economic theory was his book "Versuch einer neuen Theorie des Geldes" (Attempt at a New Theory of Money), published in 1816. In this book, Müller defended paper money over metallic money, on the grounds that the "word" or stamp is what gives something a status as money, not the value of the material of which it is composed. Müller called this legitimating word or stamp "ideal money", and believed it to be the "'condition of possibility' of money as such". The reactionary and feudalistic thought in Müller's writings, which agreed so little with the spirit of the times, prevented his political ideas from exerting a more notable and lasting influence on his age, while their religious character prevented them from being justly appreciated. However, Müller's teachings had long term effects in that they were taken up again by 20th century theorists of corporatism and the corporate state, for example Othmar Spann (Der wahre Staat. Vorlesungen über Abbruch und Neubau der Gesellschaft, Vienna, 1921).