Fonds Stadtarchiv Solingen, Na - Na 055 Karl Richard Müller (inventory)

Carl Richard Müller was born on 2 June 1889 in Knauthain near Leipzig. After finishing school, he learned the profession of gardener from 1903-1906 and then worked in several German and Swiss towns. From the beginning of 1908 until October 1909 he had a job as a gardener at the cemetery on Casinostraße in Solingen. In 1910 and 1911 he did his military service as a naval artillerist in the German colony of Tsingtau in China. At the end of his service he concluded a contract of several years with the company Hernsheim, which traded and planted in the German colonial area of New Guinea/Bismarck Archipelago on the equator north of Australia. In 1912 he worked on the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands Bougainville. After an eventful year in which he was able to realize his childhood dream as a planter in the South Seas for the first time, but also lost some illusions about life in the colonies, the employment contract was terminated prematurely (apparently after differences with the company) and Müller returned to Germany via Australia. Severe malaria attacks tortured him on his way home and in Germany, but his homeland could not keep him in the long run. From summer 1913 to spring 1914 he sought his fortune in Argentina, but found no satisfactory job and decided to apply for immigration to Australia. At the end of June 1914 he had the necessary entry papers and boarded the German steamer Roon in Antwerp with the destination Freemantle. When the world war broke out in August 1914 and Great Britain took the side of the German opponents, the ship had to break off the voyage to Australia and seek refuge in Dutch India. From 1914 to 1940 he worked at four different stations, from 1927 on Tandjongdjati in southern Sumatra, where he cultivated coffee and rubber, and in 1939 the Belgian owners appointed him manager. The climax of his career was followed by a sudden end. The invasion of the Netherlands by the Wehrmacht on 10 May 1940 turned German citizens into enemies in the Dutch colonial empire. For Müller and many others the period of internment began - until the end of 1941 in the Dutch camp Alasvallei in northern Sumatra, then under British control in the camp Premnagar near Dehra Dun in northern India at the foot of Hima-laya. Only in autumn 1946 the prisoner Carl Richard Müller number 56134 was released and arrived in Solingen in December 1946. Here he found work in the nursery Diederich in Wald, to which he also remained faithful as a pensioner with casual work. In 1966 he had to give up his independent life because of bad health and moved to the Eugen-Maurer-Heim in Gräfrath. There he died on 21 March 1973. The estate has preserved some of Müller's adventurous life. Müller and other prisoners used the enforced inactivity during the long internment years for writing and for lectures in their own circle. Of these works, pieces have been preserved which are of particular interest for research into German colonial rule and European planting in the South Seas. Müller's autobiographical manuscripts about the years 1912-1940, which he thought he could summarize as the "ro-man of a fortune-seeker" (documents 11 and 12 with the addition of the photographs in documents 6 and 7 and cards in documents 17 and 26), are to be mentioned first and foremost. In addition there are numerous essays by Müller on plant cultures, economic and technical problems on the plantations and abstracts on the nature and fauna of Indonesia, mainly Sumatra (documents 13 to 16). Work done by fellow prisoners on their experiences in Indonesia and Australia can be found in file 23, including a report on detention in Sumatra with a shorter annex on time in India. Relatively little is known about camp life in Dehra Dun; Müller, however, kept a booklet titled "Männerworte" (Aktenstück 5), in which 22 fellow prisoners registered themselves with words of remembrance. The photographs of Müller's life in Solingen after 1946 are primarily preserved, of which the works for Diederich may be of local historical interest (file 8). Furthermore, the collection contains a file of the Social Welfare Office of the City of Solingen. The stock was handed over to the City Archive by the Social Welfare Office in a suitcase, which was separated from the above documents at the time of recording. The stock was recorded for the first time in September 1998 by Anika Schulze, developed by Hartmut Roehr in 2007.

City Archive Solingen (Archivtektonik) >> 3. archives of non-urban provenance >> 3.2 Private estates and collections >> Na 55 (Karl) Richard Müller

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