Müller's mother was Adelheid, elder daughter of President von Basedow, Prime Minister of the Duchy of Dessau. She was very small, but very beautiful, clever and lively, and had a fine contralto voice; and it was from her that Max Müller inherited his intense love of music. Frau Hofrathin Müller was a highly cultivated woman, understanding English, French, and Italian perfectly. She was a woman of an eager, even passionate temperament, and her children evidently suffered early from this, as Wilhelm Müller's letters are full of warnings to her not to punish too severely, and not to expect too much from her children (babies of four and five when their father died). Her father, President von Basedow, was himself the son of a man famous in Germany in his day, the pedagogue Basedow, the forerunner of Pestalozzi and Frobel.“
This we read in: THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE FRIEDRICH MAX MÜLLER, EDITED BY HIS WIFE, in two volumes, here in volume I, Longmans, Green, and Co., 39 Parternoster Row, London, New York and Bombay 1902 by Georgina Max Müller. She is Georgina Adelaide Grenfell, born 1835, marries Friedrich Maximilian Müller in 1859 and becomes Georgina Max Müller.
We have quoted the second paragraph of the very first chapter written by Georgina Max Müller. We have taken a note that the same publisher that brought out the volumes “Auld Lang Syne” as well as “My Autobiography” by Max Müller has printed these volumes by Georgina Max Müller.
“My Autobiography” by Max Müller is another primary source and those two volumes by Georgina Max Müller are our second graded primary source. In our judgement, whatever Georgina Max Müller could write about the life of Friedrich Maximilian Müller came from Max Müller or from her own wishful phantasm. In her volumes, she has included complementary documents to Auld Lang Syne and to My Autobiography by Max Müller. We shall have to judge the quality of these documents in due course.
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We get back to the childhood and early school days of Friedrich Maximilian at Dessau. Adelheid has to vacate their common home after the sudden death of Wilhelm Müller. She is unable to pay the rent. She first takes refuge in the house of her parents. But very soon she shifts to a ground floor flat in a tiny house as Wilhelm Müller did not leave behind any cash amount or property for his widow and for the two little kids. She has to manage with a meagre pension granted by the Duke of Anhalt-Dessau. It is the yearly sum of 100 thalers, as long as she remains a widow and until her son has completed his twenty-first year. And thereafter she was to be entitled to draw the sum of fifty thalers for the rest of her life. Here we get an indication of the minimum sum needed for a single person to survive at that period, 50 thalers per annum.
In the archives we are unable find any hints why Adelheid Müller and her two helpless kids do not continue to stay with her affluent parents. We are unable to judge what happens in those days and months. We assume that Adelheid was sidelined or even ostracized by her parental family due to her love-marriage with Wilhelm Müller. She might have been too proud to ask for material support either from her parents, or from the affluent stepmother of Wilhelm Müller. There are no indications that these two affluent families ever communicated with each other.
It is handed-down that Adelheid had earned a reputation of being a good singer with a sweet voice. But she can neither earn additional funds for the family by singing, nor can she spare time to seek an occupation. She is solely dedicated to her two children. She is proud and brave. She does not move in the so-called society.
But she sends her children regularly visiting both the families. She does not accompany them. The children cling to the mother. And the mother clings to the children. In spite of her social isolation and of her extreme poverty Adelheid has been able to educate the kids sending both Auguste and Friedrich Maximilian to schools. There are however indications that a few friends of late Wilhelm Müller came forward to assist her in financial or other crisis now and then, and not her parents, not her brothers, not her well-to-do stepmother-in-law.
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The childhood of Friedrich Maximilian is hard, sad and uneventful. He suffers from chronic headaches from the very childhood till he will be 37 years old. We are unable to judge finally whether Friedrich Maximilian picks up this precarious state of his health before or after the early death of his father. It is doubtless that the life of Friedrich Maximilian changes radically caused by the sudden death of his father.
Max Müller will write two years before his death in his “My Autobiography. A Fragment”, published after his death in 1900 with a preface of his son W. G. Max Müller in the same publishing house as mentioned above, on the childhood of Friedrich Maximilian. There we read (p. 53):
“My childhood at home was often very sad. My mother, who was left a widow at twenty-eight with two children, my sister and myself, was heart-broken. The few years of her married life had been most bright and brilliant. My father was a rising poet, ... Contemporaries and friends of father, particularly Baron Simolin, a very intimate friend, who spent the Christmas of 1825 in our house, ... Anyhow, my father, whose salary was minute, seems to have been able to enjoy the few years of his married life in great comfort. The thought of saving money, however, seems never to have entered his poetical mind, and after the sudden death, due to paralysis of the heart, it was found that hardly any provision had been made for his family. Even the life insurance, which is obligatory on every civil servant, and the pension granted by the duke, gave my mother but a very small income, fabulously small, when one considers that she had to bring up two children on it. It has been a riddle to me ever since how she was able to do it.”
Friedrich Maximilian is marked by poverty from his early childhood. He is also socially isolated between two more or less affluent families. His mother is disinherited from her parental family for all practical purposes. We do not find any indication whether Adelheid Müller ever inherited her legitimate portion of her parental holdings and wealth. All these must have been depressing also for Friedrich Maximilian. None the less, “Max Müller” will write later in his autobiography (p. 53 ff):
“On my mother’s side my relatives were more civilized, and they had but little social intercourse with my grandmother and her relatives. My mother’s father was von Basedow, the president, that is Prime Minister of the duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, a position in which he was succeeded by his oldest son, my uncle. He was the first man in the town; the Duke and he really ruled the Duchy exactly as they pleased. ... My grandfather’s father again was the famous reformer of public education in Germany. He (1723–1790) ... migrated to Dessau, to become the founder of the ‘Philanthropinum’, and at the same time the path-breaker for men such as Pestalozzi (1746-1827) and Froebel (1782-1852). ...I was often told that I took after my mother’s family, whatever that may mean, and this was certainly the case in outward appearance, though I hope not in temper. My great-grandfather, the Pedagogue as he was called, was a friend of Goethe’s, and is mentioned in his poems.”
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The life of Friedrich Maximilian would have taken a different course if Adelheid could have left Dessau after the sudden death of her husband, Wilhelm Müller. But there is no way out. He has to live with his mother and sister in a tiny ground floor flat in a tiny house at Dessau, which is then a small town having a population of about 3,000. Adelheid is now 27 years old. She never thought of marriage again. She decides to live for her children only. She does her best looking after that both the kids do well at schools. She knows that education was the only way out, at least for Friedrich Maximilian, to do well, to prosper in life.
It is not easy for Friedrich Maximilian in the school. Dessau is a small town. His schoolmates and the teachers