Notes
Karl Joseph Müller painter, born 19.1.1865 in Hamburg, deported on 15.7.1942 to Theresienstadt, died there on 29.10.1942. Karl Müller was born in Hamburg-Altstadt. His wealthy Jewish parents Abraham Müller (1832-1896), citizen of the Hanseatic city since 1869, and Henriette "Jette", b. Burchard (born 1832 Neubuckow / Mecklenburg), had a cigar factory at Spielbudenplatz 5 in St.Pauli. When Karl Müller was ten years old, next to factory and warehouse, now at Speersort 11 (Altstadt), there was also a branch in Altona-Ottensen with the address Am Felde 68. The family lived at the time at Pferdemarkt 13 (Old Town). After attending the Jewish Foundation School at the Zeughausmarkt, Karl Müller completed a three-year lithography apprenticeship. From 1886 to 1888, he studied at the Royal Saxon School of Applied Arts in Dresden with the history and decoration painter Donadini, then with Professor Hanke of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. In these years, Karl Müller's dominant painting style was realism. In 1891, the oil paintings "Preparation for the Service", "In the guardroom", tattoo", "gymnastics lesson", "covert patrol” and "return from the field service exercise”, whose main motive almost always soldiers formed. In 1893, he painted the "invasion of the 76er " as a horizontal format in black and white, the painting was acquired by the Museum of Hamburg History in 1930. The disposition of Karl Müller could be classified as "kaisertreu" and "national" (Maike Bruhns) at this time - not by chance he acted with his Nicknamed "Soldatenmüller", he successfully participated in exhibitions in Berlin and Hamburg before the turn of the century. Even at this time, the frequent change of residence is striking: 1893 Papendamm 25 (Rotherbaum), 1896 Bundesstraße 9 (Rotherbaum). In 1898 he was in the Hamburg address book as a "genre and portrait painter" with the residential address 1. average 43 (Rotherbaum) out. At the age of 38, Karl married in 1903 in the Hanseatic city of the Jewish Louise Hauer (born 12.2.1872 in Hamburg), called "Lieschen". Before her marriage, she lived with her mother at Grindelberg 78. Her father, Martin Hauer (1836-1897), also born in Hamburg and was a citizen of the city since 1862, owned a factory for soap and perfume. In 1904 and 1911, the two daughters Karla and Lotte were born. 1904, the family lived at this time in the Bogenstraße 20, Karl Müller commissioned a portrait of the emigrated hamburger Henry Jones opening the same lodge in the Hartungstraße 9-11. Already at this time he might have been a member of the Hamburg Artists Association of 1832. Starting from 1908 further change of dwellings on the basis of the telephone books are comprehensible: nearly yearly the family moved and moved thereby from the Grindel quarter over Hoheluft east to Harvestehude and Winterhude. Around 1912 she moved into an apartment in Sierichstraße 156. Here, the landlord Schröder provided the artist with an area of around 45 square meters as a studio on the dry floor. But the building police criticized this use and after some disputes, the painter had to move once again with family and studio. The official telephone directory recorded as an address from 1914 to 1918 Klosterallee 20 (Harvestehude). Friedrich Jansa described Karl Müller's changed motif choice in his artist's glossary in 1912: "In recent years he has been watercolouring a lot in the Hamburg area and now mainly takes his motifs from Hamburg harbor life." All of his works are privately owned. " Landscapes, portraits, harbor scenes and folk life were created. Karl Müller did not participate in World War I for reasons of age. After 1918, the public's interest in Müller's soldier paintings disappeared. The art dealer Karl Heumann recalled in 1951 in a letter to the daughter, which was forwarded to the Office for Reparation: "I met your father shortly after the First World War, when I was managing director of the Kunstsalon Krone There were also a number of pictures of him in and out of the shop, which, as I recall, were only soldiers' pictures, maneuvers, bivouacs, etc., which I first saw here, but with the lost war, too the preference for such pictures away. " In 1919, the naturalistic image "Old Drivers" or "Lotsenzimmer", which the Museum of Hamburg History acquired in 1964, was created. From July 1919 to 1932 the family of four lived according to a telephone directory in Bieberstraße 9, I. Stock (Rotherbaum). By the inflation of 1923 she lost her savings. The financial situation worsened after the 1929 economic crisis. For the years 1929 to 1933, no payments were noted in the column of Karl Müller's Kultussteuerkartei card of the Jewish community. Relatives supported the family, which since 1933 lived in very limited economic conditions. The younger unmarried daughter Lotte was dismissed in 1933 at the Berlin State Theater for "racial" reasons. The Reichskulturkammer, founded by law in September 1933, with its seven individual chambers, was a compulsory organization for artists, but made the membership dependent on an "Aryan proof". The non-membership meant de facto a professional and publishing ban for the artist. Nevertheless, published in its evening edition of January 6, 1934, the "Hamburger Fremdenblatt" a page with soldier paintings by Karl Müller, whose popular military presentation now again corresponded to the taste of the time. However, it had escaped the notice that the painter was not allowed to publish for "racial" reasons. In the short term, Karl and Louise Müller moved into a flat in Schwenckestraße 54 III (Eimsbüttel). From 1933 to 1937 a telephone connection for the Cäcilienstraße 6 parterre (Winterhude) with the reference "painter" was registered. In order to obtain suitable premises for painting, Karl Müller built a simple wooden shed in the backyard in the summer of 1933, the roof of which reached below the windowsill of Müller's ground floor apartment. Since Karl Müller was a welfare recipient and had almost no own income left, he was granted the due approval fee of 10 RM. In October 1937, the couple moved to Gryphiusstraße 7 in Winterhude. Now Karl Müller got involved in the Jewish Culture Federation Hamburg. The last place of residence in Hamburg was an apartment in the Martin-Brunn-Stift at Frickestraße 24 in Eppendorf, which had to fulfill the function of a "deportation collective" as a "Judenhaus". The art dealer Heumann later told the Reparations Office that he had visited Karl Muller on Frickestrasse "after receiving a letter from him asking me to assist him in sending a large number of studies and pictures abroad At that time (and now there is again) there was a law according to which paintings, which would mean an irreplaceable loss to German national artistic property, could not be readily exported, whether Jewish or Aryan property After so many years of remembering that he wanted to send the pictures to Japan, I suspect that the freight forwarder has probably pointed out this legal provision to him, and as far as I can remember I have written to him confirmation that there are no reservations about the export of his pictures (...) I do not know if the expedition of the pictures abroad is done (...) ". The couple Müller was deported on July 15, 1942 from Frickestraße 24 with "Transport VI / 1" to the ghetto Theresienstadt. There they arrived on July 19, 1942. Karl Müller died according to the death in the "Central Hospital Rooms 9" on 20 October 1942 due to "heart failure". The artists' encyclopedia Rump states that he starved in Theresienstadt. Louise Rebecca Müller was deported on May 15, 1944 from the ghetto Theresienstadt to the extermination camp Auschwitz, her exact date of death is unknown. For the calculation of the indemnity claims was set by the court of May 8, 1945 as the date of death.
