Name August Muller | ||
![]() | ||
August Friedrich Muller (15 December 1684 – 1 May 1761) was a German legal scholar and logician.
August Friedrich was born in Penig, the son of Johann Adam Muller and his wife Johanne Susanne, daughter of a pharmacist in Rochlitz, Johann Fromhold. Prefigured by his father, he attended school in 1697 and studied at the University of Leipzig from 1703. Here he completed a degree in early philosophical sciences; Andreas Rudiger (1673–1731) was his most important teacher. On the side he studied law under Gottlieb Gerhard Titius (1661–1714).
In 1707 he received his degree of Magister in Leipzig, where he set up a school of philosophy. After a stay at the University of Erfurt, where on 8 October 1714 he received his doctorate in law, he returned to Leipzig, where he also lectured on law. A position was offered to him at the University of Halle but he became an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig in 1732, succeeding Christian Thomasius and his pupil, Andreas Rudiger. He was Dean of Philosophy several times, first in 1736. He died in Leipzig, aged 76.
Bach composed the cantata Zerreiset, zersprenget, zertrummert die Gruft, BWV 205 in 1725 for the name day of Muller and performed the piece on the evening of 3 August 1725 in front of the professor’s house at 2 Katharinenstrase in Leipzig.