MULLER Friedrich Max (Meuller)

Muller, Friedrich Max (Meuller), (1823-1900), German philologist, orientalist, specialist in general linguistics and mythology, unwitting progenitor of the Aryan race theory. Born Dec. 6, 1823 in Dessau. Son of the German writer, poet and librarian of the court of Wilhelm Muller. In 1841 entered the University of Leipzig, where, on the advice of Hermann Brockhaus began to study Sanskrit. In 1844 in Berlin, he studied comparative philology in his invitation to his professor Franz Bopp, also worked on the idealistic philosophy of Friedrich von Schelling. Visiting Paris in 1845, Mueller acquainted with the works of Eugene Burnofa, a leading specialist language of the Avesta, which prompted him to study comparative religion. This discipline attracted his attention to the end of life. In 1846, deciding to implement the new edition of the Rig Veda, Mueller went to England, where he studied the archives "East India House in London and worked in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Having a brilliant young Germans a warm reception, British scientists have presented it to Queen Victoria and Prince Consort, and persuaded the East India Company to provide him financial support for the publication of the Rig Veda (6 vols., 1849-1874).

In 1856, Mueller became a teacher of modern languages Taylor Institute in Oxford, where his reputation began to grow rapidly thanks to the brilliant lectures on classical anthropology and linguistics. Few new interest in anthropology and ethnography, Mueller argued that the growing human consciousness must be explained on the basis of the history of language. He considered himself "the author of the science of language", although many of his theories were refuted by later research.

Muller was the unwitting creator of the popular, since the second half of the XIX century, the "Aryan theory". It was he who coined the term "Aryan" instead of the cumbersome "Indo-European". One of the first he began to study the migration of Indo-European peoples than paved the way for the pseudo-"Aryan theory", based on rigging concepts of "race" and "language". Muller himself was taken aback unexpected use made of the assumptions and in 1888 warned the scientists studying the problem of race: "I have again and again to say that if I speak of" Aryans ", it does not mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull. I mean only those who speak Aryan languages. For me, ethnologist, who insists on the Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is the bearer of the greatest sin as a linguist, who speaks about dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar. This is worse than the Babylonian confusion of tongues - this apparent theft. We must create its own terminology for the classification of languages. Let ethnologists create their own terms for the classification of skulls, hair, temperament, origin, type ". Notion of "Aryan" in linguistics, insisted Muller, totally inapplicable to the origin. It means language and nothing but the language, and if someone speaks of the Aryan race in general, it does not mean anything other than the Aryan speech.

But the damage was already done. Muller received a reproach, but his arguments had not affected the racists. He died in Oxford on Oct. 28, 1900. Since that time began borrowing "science" - a linguistic palaeontology to confirm the existence of purity and superiority of the Aryan (later - the Nordic) race. As a result, racism has become the central ideology of the Third Reich.