For all who want to know who this guy was who wrote the texts to the
Schoene Muellerin and the Winterreise here a short biography:

Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Mueller, in short Wilhelm Mueller, known also as
Griechen-Mueller (Mueller of the Greeks) because of his enthusiasm and
admiration for the Greek fight for independence from the Turks.

He was born in Dessau on the 7th of October 1794 and died there, too,
tragically early on the 1st of October 1827.  He was the only surviving
of six (some say seven, well six or seven, sounds like a loud house anyway)
children of the master tailor Christian Leopold Mueller and his wife Marie
Luise Leopoldine.  He attended school in Dessau.  Beginning with the year
1812 he studied classical philology in Berlin.  In 1813 he joined the
Prussian army to defend Germany against Napoleon and thus further German
unity.  He fought in the battles of Luetzen, Bautzen, Hanau and Kulm as
Gardejaeger (hunter of the guard, a military title - "Was sucht denn der
Jaeger am Muehlbach hier?").  He worked in the Prague depot and the
Brussels headquarters and went back to Dessau in 1814.

Together with other fellow students, former soldiers like him, he published
his first poems in 1816 (especially poems against the French people) in a
volume called Bundesblueten (Blossoms Of The Alliance - well, talk about
pathos).  He finished his studies in 1817 in Berlin.  Being a member of the
Berliner Gesellschaft fuer deutsche Sprache (Berlin Society for the German
language) he moved in intellectual circles and was known to Romantiker
giants like the Grimms, von Arnim, Brentano, Fouque and Tieck.  On behalf
of the Berlin Academy of Sciences he was to travel to Greece, Egypt and
the Middle East with the Prussian chamberlain Baron Sack.  Because of the
plague in Constantinople they stopped off in Italy.  The January of 1818
saw them in Rome.  Around Eastern he parted from Sack because he wanted to
stay in Italy - to study (here we have the typical intellectual traveller).
So he went to Naples and spent the summer in Rome.  In Italy he experienced
the same dictatorial regulations and the same censureship as in Prussia
which made him become more and more liberal and tolerant.  Once he wrote
to his friend Per Daniel Atterbom, a famous Danish writer:  "Truly, I feel
ashamed very often that I lifted my sword against the French people!"

When he came back the Berlin Akademie wasn't too happy about his
unauthorized cancellation of the Orient journey and sacked him for leaving
Sack (sorry, but I had to make this pun).  So he had to return to Dessau
in 1819 and work as a grammar school teacher for Latin and Greek, for a
ridiculously poor salary.  His fame as an author was established beginning
with 1821 when he began to publish his folksy poems which are, as Brecht
states it, "easy things difficult to make".  He worked for the publishing
house Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus in Leipzig (yes, the famous encyclopaedia
publisher) as translator, critic, biographer and editor.  He wrote essays
for the yearbooks Hermes and Urania and the Literarische Wochenblatt
(Literary Weekly) and edited the Bibliothek deutscher Dichter im 17.
Jahrhundert (Library Of German Poets Of The Seventeenth Century).

All this was possible because he had been appointed teacher of classics
and librarian of the court library by the duke Leopold Friedrich for a
much better salary than as a teacher (it is good to have friends among the
mighty).  In 1824 he became counsellor to the court.  In 1821 he married
Adelheid Basedow, the granddaughter of the famous educationalist Johann
Bernhard Basedow (now, how is it that famous men always marry other famous
men's daughters?).  The year 1824 saw his poetical breakthrough:  the
Waldhornisten poems that include the Schoene Muellerin and the Winterreise.
Seemingly harmless verses whose longing for a free and harmonic homecountry
express fierce criticism of the reactionary politics of the time.  Almost
every poem of Mueller got set to music and became tremendously popular by
this.  A lot of his works, especially the Greece poems, were banned and
censured.

He was now a famous man - with famous friends and acquaintances,
for example Carl Maria von Weber and Goethe (sounds like fun to be a
Romantiker).  The duke gave him a wonderful flat in the garden house of the
Dessau park Luisium, with orange trees in front of the windows (sounds like
big fun to be a Romantiker).  Shortly after a journey along the Rhine and
through the Southwest of Germany on which he met the important Romantik
poets and authors A.W.  Schlegel, Schwab, Hauff, Kerner and Uhland he died
of a heart attack shortly before his 34th birthday (doesn't sound like fun
to be a Romantiker).

Today Mueller is virtually forgotten, only scholars and Lieder friends know
his name.  The people who sing folk songs like Am Brunnen vor dem Tore or
Im Krug zum Gruenen Kranze have no idea that a "lefty" wrote them (well, a
lefty paid by a duke - these were complicated times).  But Heinrich Heine,
undoubtely one of the gods of German literature, wrote in a letter to
Mueller:  "How pure and clear your songs are, real folk songs.  I am idle
enough to believe that my name will once, when we live no longer, be
mentioned together with yours."

Mueller's most important works:  1820 Rom, Roemer und Roemerinnen (Rome,
Roman Men And Women), 1821/24 Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren
eines reisenden Waldhornisten (Poems From The Posthumously Left Papers Of
A Travelling French Horn Player - this book not only has a nice title but
also contains Die schoene Muellerin and Die Winterreise), 1821 Lieder der
Griechen (Songs Of The Greeks), 1823 Neue Lieder der Griechen (New Songs
Of The Greeks), 1824 Neueste Lieder der Griechen (Newest Songs Of The
Greeks - well, what have I said about nice and witty book titles?), 1825
Neugriechische Volkslieder (Modern Greek Folk Songs), 1826 Missolunghi
(yes, these are the supernewest songs of the Greeks), 1826/27 Kleine
Liebesreime aus den Inseln des Archipelages (Little Love Rhymes From The
Isles Of The Archipelago - the guy isn't called Mueller of the Greeks
without a reason), 1827 Lyrische Reisen und epigrammatische Spaziergaenge
(Lyrical Travels And Epigrammatic Walks).  Didactic works include the
Homerische Vorschule (1824, Homeric Preparatory School).  To prove that
you can do a lot in only 33 years the guy also made a translation of
Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus.

BTW, Mueller is mentioned with not a single word on the official websites
of the town of Dessau.  Well, is there no birthplace, no tombstone? What
about the garden house with the orange trees?

BTW No.2:  if you have always longed to see the Brunnen vor dem Tore and
the Lindenbaum your wish can be fulfilled.  Click on

   http://www.werra-meissner.de/bad-sooden-allendorf/freizeit/sehenswuerdigkeiten/sehens07.htm

and there you are.  No joke.  The fountain Mueller wrote about is the old
Zimmersbrunnen in front of the gates of the Allendorfer old town.  (Bad
Sooden-Allendorf is somewhere in the federal state of Hessen, do not ask
me where exactly).  The mighty lime tree was planted fifty years ago at
exactly the spot where the original tree stood which was knocked down by a
rainstorm (this is a pity since so we can't see the wanderer's carvings in
the bark and find out his sweetheart's name ;-).

Have a Schubert kind of day,
Robert Peters
[log in to unmask]