When you climbed the stairs to his apartment in Berlin-Mitte, you could look forward to the beach, the sea, the fresh air. An apartment in the attic – or maybe a museum? Christoph Müller lived with his paintings. In recent years he has been particularly taken with the art of Janus la Cour, who belonged to the so-called Golden Age of Danish painting in the 19th century.
Generous gifts
Christoph Müller has collected the landscapes of la Cour, the seascapes, the mountain panoramas. The Dane reminds us a little of CD Friedrich, but he breathed more freely; you can already feel the impressionists. “The Power of Silence”: The Berlin writer Simon Elson has published a beautiful book about Janus la Cour, with the support of Christoph Müller. Patronage was one of his many passions.
He bought, he collected and passed on his treasures. Müller donated 375 old master drawings and graphics to the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett. The museum in Schwerin received 155 paintings from his Dutch collection, the largest old master donation in post-war Germany. The museum in Greifswald received an extensive collection of Danish art, including more than 150 paintings.
Publisher and theatre critic
Müller donated other large parts of his collection to the Leipzig Museum. Not that he had lost interest in the old Dutch paintings. But a collector needs space, and he always wanted to give his paintings a good home. With Christoph Müller, you could feel at home, as a work of art, as a person.
His career was special in many ways. He was born in Stuttgart in 1938, and you could always tell he was from Swabia. In the early 1960s he came to West Berlin, where he was a trainee at the Tagesspiegel and then a local editor for a few years. In 1969 he returned to Tübingen and took over the “Schwäbisches Tagblatt” from his father. There has probably never been a publisher and editor-in-chief who was also a theater critic.
And Christoph Müller was a well-known critic. Passionate, controversial, always present. A portrait of the playwright Samuel Beckett hung in his editor-in-chief’s office. The “Schwäbische Tagblatt” experienced exciting times with him. The reputation of the left-wing, committed local newspaper reached far beyond Swabia.
Twenty years ago, Müller sold his shares in the “Tagblatt” and returned to Berlin. Was there a premiere where you didn’t find him in the foyer? And who else could you argue with so wonderfully during the interval when he was outraged about bad performances and talked about the great Peymann era in Stuttgart? He was always on the lookout for discoveries and followed the work of young directors very closely.
Christoph Müller was a collector of passions. He remained loyal to the stage. In 1995, his partner Axel Manthey, a stage designer and director, died. Manthey’s visually powerful production of Strindberg’s “Dream Play” is still remembered today. Christoph Müller loved opera, and the concert experiences that he could no longer attend live, he brought home with his impressive hi-fi system.
It was a pleasure to exchange ideas with him and test one’s own memory. The conversations jumped from culture to politics. In memory of the Jewish art historian Max J. Friedländer, who had to flee from the Nazis, Müller founded a prize for art historians named after Friedländer in 2014.
The Danish painter Janus la Cour had a special talent for rocks and mountains. And he loved Italy, and created wonderful pictures there. Perhaps that is why Christoph Müller was so attracted to his art. He too nurtured his roots, and was drawn away. Now he has died in Berlin at the age of 86.