August Friedrich Müller


August Friedrich Müller was a German legal scholar and logician.
August Friedrich was born in Penig, the son of Johann Adam Müller 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 Rüdiger was his most important teacher. On the side he studied law under Gottlieb Gerhard Titius.
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 Rüdiger. He was Dean of Philosophy several times, first in 1736. He died in Leipzig, aged 76.
Bach composed the cantata Zerreißet, zersprenget, zertrümmert die Gruft, BWV 205 in 1725 for the name day of Müller and performed the piece on the evening of 3 August 1725 in front of the professor’s house at 2 Katharinenstraße in Leipzig.

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