{"id":25,"date":"2024-04-03T23:39:15","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T20:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/myller\/"},"modified":"2024-04-04T00:11:15","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T21:11:15","slug":"myller","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/m\/myller\/","title":{"rendered":"Georg M\u00fcller"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGeorg M\u00fcller (c. 1565\/1570 \u2013 10. VII \/ 30. VI 1608) was the assistant pastor of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Tallinn. The manuscripts of his sermons given between 1600 and 1607 constitute the earliest preserved substantial texts in Estonian.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tLittle is known of M\u00fcller\u2019s origins, and his nationality has given rise to plenty of debate in Estonia \u2013 he has been regarded as both Estonian and German, but insufficient clarity has been achieved on this question. He was born outside Tallinn but on present-day Estonian territory; some details point to an origin in Tartu. He was an orphan, and got his primary education at the Tallinn town council\u2019s expense at town school. In 1587, on a stipend from Tallinn town council, he went to L\u00fcbeck to study for at least three years (it is not known exactly where or what). Having returned from L\u00fcbeck, he worked in Riga as an assistant schoolmaster, from 1595 to 1599 he was commissioned by Tallinn council as assistant schoolmaster at Tallinn town school, then worked as a teacher in Rakvere. From 1601 to 1608 he was deacon of the congregation of the Holy Spirit. His patron is believed to have been the long-term pastor of the Holy Spirit, Balthasar Russow, the author of the \u2018Chronicle of Livonia\u2019, who died in 1601.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter his death in Tallinn in 1608, Georg M\u00fcller\u2019s name passed into oblivion until 1884, when 35 notebooks of his written sermons were found in the Tallinn town archives \u2013 altogether 39 sermons on 404 pages of manuscript. The manuscripts were published in 1891 under the editorship of the Estonian Learned Society on the initiative of Villem Reiman, one of the most important figures of the Estonian national reawakening. The style of M\u00fcller\u2019s sermons is spontaneous, creative, demotic and at times personal \u2013 in contrast to later sermons in Estonian, such as those by Heinrich Stahl (c. 1600 \u2013 1657), which adhered to a markedly drier, and from today\u2019s point of view more tedious, canon. Evidently the manuscripts were an aide-memoire to him personally when giving sermons, and were not intended for publication. These sermons were given at a time when the Old Livonia was ravaged by war, crop failure, famine and above all plague, which reached its apogee in 1603 and even took M\u00fcller\u2019s wife to the grave. At some periods, as their pastor, M\u00fcller buried over four hundred people in a month. The events happening around him found their reflection in M\u00fcller\u2019s sermons, as did the wasteful and loose lifestyle of influential people in the town, and M\u00fcller\u2019s tense relations with his superiors. M\u00fcller\u2019s direct mode of expression cannot have made his position easier. He was a very erudite man, who must have been the first to say in Estonian the words of Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, Pindar, Augustine, Cyprian, Bernard of Clairvaux and many other figures from antiquity and Christian authorities \u2013 at a time when not even the New Testament had appeared in Estonian yet, and Estonians knew the Bible only from sermons. M\u00fcller used plenty of similes and metaphors. His tone was orthodox Lutheran, declaring the vanity of all worldly things and repentance after a life of sin.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe discovery of M\u00fcller\u2019s sermons at the end of the 19th century changed the understanding of the dawn of the Estonian literary language, a central place in which had thitherto been held by the works of Heinrich Stahl as founder of the written language. Since M\u00fcller\u2019s manuscript was not printed, or apparently even read, it did not further influence the development of literary Estonian, unlike Stahl\u2019s books. M\u00fcller\u2019s rich and picturesque Estonian was close to German, as was Stahl\u2019s, and yet different from the latter. This language was written down with German orthography and appears to be a mixture of many dialects which were current at the time in Tallinn \u2013 mainly North Estonian dialects, but there is considerable vocabulary from South Estonia and the islands as well. M\u00fcller\u2019s legacy has been studied since the late 19th century specifically by linguists; it has been dealt with to a lesser extent from the theological, historical and cultural viewpoints. Outside of specialist circles M\u00fcller\u2019s sermons are little known, obviously because of the linguistic complexities. This situation changed in 2008 with a reprinting of M\u00fcller\u2019s sermons, with a translation into modern Estonian in parallel alongside the old text, allowing the literary value of these sermons to be more easily appreciated.<\/span><\/p>\n

S. V. (Translated by C. M.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/span><\/strong><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tNeununddreissig Estnische Predigten von Georg M\u00fcller aus den Jahren 1600-1606<\/strong>. Mit einem Vorwort von Wilhelm Reiman, Pastor zu Klein St. Johannis; herausgegeben von der Gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft bei der Universit\u00e4t Dorpat. Dorpat; Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1891, LIV+341 lk. [Available: <\/span>http:\/\/www.digar.ee\/id\/nlib-digar:58121<\/a>. 2nd print: London: Forgotten Books, 2018.]
K\u00fclli Habicht, Valve-Liivi Kingisepp, Urve Pirso, K\u00fclli Prillop, Georg M\u00fclleri jutluste s\u00f5nastik<\/strong>. Tartu: Tartu \u00dclikool, 2000, 515 lk. [Available: <\/span>http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10062\/52423<\/a>.]
Jutluseraamat<\/strong>. Koostanud: K\u00fclli Habicht, Valve-Liivi Kingisepp, Jaak Peebo ja K\u00fclli Prillop. Eess\u00f5nad: Huno R\u00e4tsep, Villem Reiman, K\u00fclli Prillop, Kai Tafenau. Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2008, 805 lk.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tGeorg M\u00fcller\u2019s sermons online, full texts<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
http:\/\/www.murre.ut.ee\/vakkur\/Korpused\/Myller\/<\/a>.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Georg M\u00fcller (c. 1565\/1570 \u2013 10. VII \/ 30. VI 1608) was the assistant pastor of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Tallinn. The manuscripts of his sermons given between 1600 and 1607 constitute the earliest preserved substantial texts …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"parent":642,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-25","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5060,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25\/revisions\/5060"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}