Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (June 28, 1928 â August 3, 2019), born in Hamburg, Germany, was an American philosopher and professor of German Studies and Humanities at Stanford University. Mueller-Vollmer studied in Germany, France, Spain and the United States. He held a master's degree in American Studies from Brown University, and a doctorate in German Studies and Humanities from Stanford University, where he taught for over 40 years. His major publications concentrate in the areas of Literary Criticism, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Romantic and Comparative Literature, language theory, cultural transfer and translation studies. Mueller-Vollmer made noteworthy scholarly contributions elucidating the theoretical and empirical linguistic work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, including the discovery of numerous manuscripts previously thought lost or otherwise unknown containing Humboldt's empirical studies of numerous languages from around the world.
Mueller-Vollmer was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2000. He was also bestowed with the Wilhelm-von-Humboldt-Foundation Award presented in a public ceremony at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, on June 22, 2007.
Born in Hamburg, Germany, June 28, 1928, Mueller-Vollmer grew up in the cities of Cologne and Hamburg, Germany, where, in learning the local dialects of those cities, it was said he developed an early interest in and proficiency for languages and language study. This included a summer English language school on the Frisian island Wyk auf Foehr. Though the classes were cut off by the approach of World War II, they helped to set in motion Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs early acquired proficiency in English.
Mueller-Vollmer and his family survived bombing attacks both in Hamburg and Cologne. Drafted out of high school into the German Army and compelled to serve in an anti-aircraft unit near Cologne, Mueller-Vollmer recounted how he managed to escape through the surrounding woods. Having memorized a map of the Cologne area, Mueller-Vollmer made his way to a small town inhabited by a sympathetic Pietistic religious group where the mayor prepared new identity papers for him. Mueller-Vollmer used these papers to help make his way through checkpoints to reach the invading Allied forces for whom he then served as a translator.
Following World War II Mueller-Vollmer completed his high school studies at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium in Cologne, receiving the Scheffel Prize for the best Abitur (comprehensive final exam) essay in the city of Cologne He then attended the Albertus Magnus University of Cologne where he focused on history, philosophy, German and Romance languages, and became acquainted with renowned scholars and academicians in these fields including Bruno Liebrucks, Gottfried Martin, Karl-Heinz Volkmann-Schluck, Richard Alewyn, Fritz Schalk, and Johannes Hoffmeister.
In 1951-52 Mueller-Vollmer enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, attending lectures by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Hyppolite, Gaston Bachelard, and Robert Minder. During the summer of 1952 Mueller-Vollmer traveled to Valladolid, Spain to study Spanish language and literature at the Colegio de Santa Cruz.
Following completion of his university studies in Cologne in 1953, Mueller-Vollmer received a Fulbright Fellowship to attend Brown University, where he focused on American Studies and philology. At Brown, under the guidance of the eminent historian of colonial America, Professor Edmund S. Morgan, Mueller-Vollmer received his MasterâÂÂs Degree in American Studies. These studies with Professor Morgan helped lay the groundwork for Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs future research on the transfer and contributions of German Romantic discourse and literature to early 19th century American literary culture and philosophy.
From 1956-1958, Mueller-Vollmer received a Ford Foundation fellowship to continue his graduate studies in a newly conceived interdisciplinary graduate Ph.D. program in Humanities at Stanford University. Under the aegis of Professor Kurt F. Reinhardt - an émigré from Germany who had studied at the University of Freiburg-in-Breisgau under the philosopher-phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Mueller-Vollmer was awarded a Ph.D. in German Studies and Humanities in 1962. Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs Ph.D. dissertation presented for the first time in English a critical exposition of the historian and hermeneutic philosopher Wilhelm DiltheyâÂÂs literary theories.
Following his studies in Providence, Rhode Island at Brown University, Mueller-Vollmer resided for the remainder of his life near Stanford University, first in Menlo Park, then in Palo Alto. Mueller-Vollmer often took interim residence, taught and traveled in Europe, residing especially in Hamburg and Goettingen, as well as in Paris, Berlin and Cologne.
Prompted by childhood memories of Nazi oppression and terror, Mueller-Vollmer had a visceral distrust of ideologies, propagandist tendencies (the abuse and malicious use of language), and authoritarian regimes. In transitioning to his new life in America and California, and following in the spirit of naturalists and romanticists, Mueller-Vollmer came to regard America, and California in particular, as an environment that encouraged free thought and expression.
Mueller-Vollmer was a linguist who, in addition to his native German language and various dialects such as Plattdeutsch and the Cologne dialect, spoke and wrote English with native fluency. His numerous publications, courses and public lectures were divided between German and English. As well, Mueller-Vollmer spoke and wrote in French and was conversant in Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Latin.
Students and colleagues have attested to Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs demanding standards of scholarship and critical thinking. He also writes poetry.
Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs scholarship into Wilhelm von HumboldtâÂÂs research of North and South American native American languages, as well as the impact of 18th and 19th century missionaries on these languages, led Mueller-Vollmer, in taking a personal interest in the historical plight of Native Americans, to contribute to their charities
During the 1980s and 1990s Mueller-Vollmer took an active role in establishing and maintaining a German-American private primary and secondary bilingual school established in the vicinity of Stanford University.
He died at his home on August 3, 2019. He was survived by his wife, Patricia Ann Mueller-Vollmer and his two sons.
Beginning as an instructor in German in 1958, Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs academic and teaching career at Stanford â along with guest professor locations in the United States and Europe - spanned over 50 years. He was appointed 1962-1964 as Assistant Professor of German, 1964-1967 as Associate Professor of German, 1967 until retirement in 1995 as Professor of German and Humanities.
Mueller-Vollmer also held a number of guest professorships both in the United States and Europe including at: the University of Hamburg (1962); at the University of Bonn (1976); at the University of Washington at Seattle (1983); at the Institute for Germanic Philology, Uniwertsytet Jagiellonski, Kraków, Poland (1985); as visiting scholar: "Center for Advanced Studies in Translation" at the Georg-August- Universität Göttingen, Germany (1993); at Göttingen as Senior Fulbright Guest Professor (1997); at Göttingen as Participant in Research Project of the "Center for the Advanced Study in the Internationality of National Literatures" at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen where he was responsible for the project "Madame de Staël in America" as part of a larger research undertaking: "Internationale Vernetzung: Personen, Medien und Institutionen als Vermittlungsinstanzen von Literatur" (1998-1999); further extended stays at Göttingen in 1998, 1999, 2000; at the University of California at Berkeley, Department of German (Spring, 2005, 2006).
Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs scholarly work included: philosophy and phenomenology; German and European philosophy; the history of ideas; literary theory; philosophy of language; philosophical and literary hermeneutics (interpretation theory); poetics; German and European literature from the 18th and 19th centuries; history and methodologies of the humanities and human sciences; linguistics; translation and discourse theory; European and American Romanticism; American Transcendentalism and 19th century German-American cultural transfers and literary discourse; the internationality of literature; European modernism; modern poetry; and the philosophical and empirical work of Wilhelm von Humboldt. In his teaching and writing Mueller-Vollmer moved freely among these different areas.
In addition to his teaching duties as Stanford Professor of German and Humanities, Mueller-Vollmer gave public lectures involving topics beyond his regular university course work. These topics included the thought and empirical work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, German-American cultural transfer, the internationality of literature, discourse transfer theory and the work of Germaine de Staël, translation theory and philosophical and literary hermeneutics.
Mueller-Vollmer substantially catalogued his papers to facilitate continuing study, research and additional publication.
Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs scholarly work often treated and drew from the following thinkers and poets: Giambattista Vico, William von Humboldt (especially), Immanuel Kant, J. G. Herder, J. G. Fichte, Fr. Schleiermacher, J. W. Goethe, Germaine de Staël, the Jena Romantics, William Coleridge, R. W. Emerson and the New England Transcendentalists, R. M. Rilke, Christian Morgenstern, Dadaism, Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, Roman Ingarden and Terry Winograd (concerning the relationship between artificial intelligence and translation,).
Mueller-Vollmer also critiqued such diverse thinkers and schools as St. Augustine, 18th century German Missionaries in America, G. W. F. Hegel, K. Marx and F. Nietzsche, Ferdinand de Saussure, H-G. Gadamer, K-O. Apel and J. Habermas, and various schools of contemporary literary criticism such as New Criticism, Formalism, Reception Theory, Structuralism and Postmodernism.
As reflected by his concentration on the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Romantic language theory, overarching themes of Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs scholarship included the role of creative imagination and âÂÂthe seminal interplay of philosophy, poetics, hermeneutics, literary and poetic productionâ in shaping how consciousness is formed and reality in the form of views of the world is conceived, experienced and presented.
In his writings Mueller-Vollmer would often comparatively frame topics such as the nature of the literary work of art, the concept of interpretation, or the feasibility of discourse transfer and translation within embracing philosophical dimensions, schools and debates. After presenting and placing an issue or theme in historical, comparative or structural context, he would proceed to discuss its implications and consequences.
Mueller-Vollmer referenced GoetheâÂÂs notion of âÂÂmultiple reflexion or mirroring whereby each reflexion of a phenomenon yields a different view of the same phenomenon. . . . At the end these multiple reflexions should yield some essential insight (or Wesensschau) into the whole phenomenon in all its complexity.â As an example, Mueller-Vollmer explains, an American literary figure such as Francis Lieber might be viewed within the context of his role as a translator. Similar aspects of this figure might then appear in other contexts, such as performing editorship and conducting research activities. Such different contexts taken together could afford a deeper understanding of the figureâÂÂs work.
Mueller-Vollmer held that, as âÂÂthe starting point of any historical doctrine which attempts to interpret and to explain mankind's cultural institutions and creationsâ one should consider âÂÂuniversal elements as they are embedded in a particular historical configuration and the relation between the two.â Such universals comprise key underlying structural conditions and generic human abilities involved in the ability to understand foreign languages and poetic discourse across time such as from the Homeric era.
These universals would extend across disciplinary lines to characterize both modes of being and an understanding of what those human activities styled as âÂÂhumanitiesâ perform. For example, early in his career Mueller-Vollmer investigated how Wilhelm Dilthey, employing the concepts of essence, type and symbol, intended for his poetic to provide a comprehensive approach to the study of literary phenomena and to serve to evaluate diverse critical approaches encountered in European and American studies of the human sciences.
In 2014, Mueller-Vollmer published Transatlantic Crossings and Transformations: German-American Cultural Transfer from the 18th to the End of the 19th Century. This work, including a focus on aspects of translation and discourse theory and New England Transcendentalism, studies eighteenth and nineteenth century German-American cultural transfers which, according to Mueller-Vollmer, played an important part in the formation of earlier American national and cultural identity.
Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs book, Zu Hermeneutik, Literaturkritik und Sprachtheorie (On Hermeneutics, Theory of Literature and Language), comprises a series of essays in German and English exploring how J. G. Fichte, J. G. Herder, W. Humboldt and the Romantics understood the role of language and imagination in shaping human experience and art, including how language, self-consciousness and understanding arise through speech. Along with topics concerning the literary work of art, the philosophy of history, German humanities, philology, and semiotics, the book also considers how phenomenology and the concept of interpretation play a role in literary theory. In discussing the work of Giambatista Vico, A. W. Schlegel and F. Schlegel, Novalis, Germaine de Staël, Fr. Schleiermacher, G. W. F. Hegel and H-G. Gadamer, the essays also elucidate romantic poetics, hermeneutics, translation theory, discourse and cultural transfer topics.
In a 1991 lecture on his research into recovering Wilhelm von HumboldtâÂÂs lost linguistic research manuscripts, Mueller-Vollmer noted that human studies characteristically involve the relationship between the establishment of fact on the one hand, and the task of interpretation and reconstruction on the other.
Mueller-Vollmer believed one must go beyond merely regarding the humanities as a reprieve from other, more restricting disciplines and frameworks such as âÂÂthe sciences, technology, the world of engineering, industry, or war production,â or merely standing for the 'humaneâ side of our culture.â He rejected what he regarded as a âÂÂtotally false view" and "false dualism" not only of the humanities âÂÂbut of the real world as wellâ that the humanities âÂÂare supposed to supply us with valuesàand other good things and serve as an antidote, or at least as a temporary escape from the serious business of the world.âÂÂÃÂ
However much the humanities may be thought to comprise various fields meant to preserve and cultivate subjective-cultural human expressions, as a starting point Mueller-Vollmer chose not proceed to study or present the humanities as a set of fixed disciplines with traditional themes as though one already understood what the humanities were about or what role they played. Rather, he approached them heuristically, as an âÂÂunknown,â an âÂÂother,â as he states in his seminar course notes, into which we can then inquire and expand upon.
As an example, in his 1996 Stanford seminar, Vico's New Science: Introduction to the Humanities, Mueller-Vollmer, using VicoâÂÂs New Science (Nueva Scienzia) as a starting point, proceeded to regard the humanities as an âÂÂother,â and - not unlike formulating hypotheses or approaches in the sciences - to advance toward an understanding based on what pre-knowledge one might already possess. A threshold issue would be how to bridge the gap between modern and ancient world views such as prevailed in HomerâÂÂs era.
Mueller-Vollmer suggested that Vico's major work, New Science, âÂÂsets forth an understanding of its subjectàmatter, i.e. the humanities in the full sense of the word.â Mueller-Vollmer considered that the effort to understand the New Science would be instructive concerning the humanities by engaging in them - in effect, by interpreting a work. It would also âÂÂat the same time deal with the nature of humanistic studies by showing what they are all about. It is in this dual sense that the book (New Science) will serve us as an introduction to the humanities.âÂÂ
Along with philosophy and literature, history, historiography, cultural and literary history were core topics of Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs formative studies at the University of Cologne, the Sorbonne, and Brown University with Professor Edmund S. Morgan, and play important roles in his writings. Mueller-Vollmer essays might combine biography, political, cultural and literary history with language theory, discourse transfer and translation theory. In his essays Mueller-Vollmer typically contextualized topics and issues within their cultural-historical and intellectual-historical frameworks
Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs history teaching and scholarship includes:
In his study of philosophy Mueller-Vollmer focused on thinkers and authors such as J. G. Fichte, J. W. Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt, F. Schlegel and A. W. Schlegel, àWm. Coleridge and W. Dilthey, who in particular reflected on those mental activities by which objects of experience and experience of them are constituted â especially mental activities deemed to be universal, creative, and imaginative. As well, in his writings and courses Mueller-Vollmer specialized in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and the literary and aesthetic theories of the Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden.
Examples of Mueller-Vollmer's writings on Romanticism include:
As editor, analyst and commentator Mueller-Vollmer compiled a two volume study edition of HumboldtâÂÂs writings on aesthetics, literary theory, political theory and historiography, the study of which Mueller-Vollmer believed would substantially revise HumboldtâÂÂs image.
Mueller-Vollmer authored entries on Wilhelm von Humboldt for German publications as well as the entry for Wilhelm von Humboldt in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Mueller-Vollmer noted that Humboldt sought to âÂÂcircumscribe, assess and analyze the entire cosmos of the human languages and to treat them as a key to an understanding of human history and culture,â originated concepts of language that anticipated developments in 20th century linguistics, and derived concepts of language structure and grammar that were not obtained from Latin language-based notions and forms. Mueller-Vollmer held that HumboldtâÂÂs recently discovered or re-examined manuscripts reinforce HumboldtâÂÂs theory that the worldâÂÂs languages in their diversity individually express innate human linguistic abilities, but also that humanityâÂÂs diverse languages are not necessarily mutually derived or related. Rather, languages emerge from the inherent human capacity for linguistic expression. This Humboldtian view Mueller-Vollmer believed had become lost to subsequent linguistic schools, suggesting the need for a renewed evaluation of HumboldtâÂÂs linguistic thought.
Various Mueller-Vollmer articles and lectures take up the nature and dimensions of HumboldtâÂÂs empirical linguistic research. These include:
With the assistance of other Humboldt scholars and the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, Mueller-Vollmer undertook as principle editor (Herausgeber) to publish with the Schoeningh Verlag a multi-volume series of HumboldtâÂÂs empirical writings on linguistics that would present and evaluate HumboldtâÂÂs linguistic legacy in detail.
The introductory volume for this series, published in 1993, incorporates Mueller-Vollmer's catalogues and provides an overview and description of HumboldtâÂÂs linguistic manuscripts and papers, and diverse grammatical and other empirical studies Humboldt produced for languages in Asia, Europe and the Americas. These include manuscripts and other papers located by Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs searches. In this volume Mueller-Vollmer also recounts major aspects of the search for these manuscripts.
Various Mueller-Vollmer articles take up aspects of Wilhelm von HumboldtâÂÂs theories on language:
Other Mueller-Vollmer books, essays and collections take up HumboldtâÂÂs poetics and aesthetic theories:
Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs articles and collections that discuss HumboldtâÂÂs political theory, history and related topics include:
In discussing Wilhelm von HumboldtâÂÂs review of A. W. SchlegelâÂÂs Latin translation of the Bhagavad-Gita and G. W. F. HegelâÂÂs related criticisms, one Mueller-Vollmer essay examines how for Humboldt humankindâÂÂs generic language ability results in the great diversity of its actual languages and cultures, and whether one can comprehend another language and discourse by transcending the discursive barriers seemingly imposed by ones own language, culture and history.
Mueller-Vollmer considered whether a philosophical text such as HegelâÂÂs Phenomenology of Spirit (Phaenomenologie des Geistes) incorporates concepts that resist straightforward translation such that a performative reading experience as expressed in HegelâÂÂs text is ultimately confined to the textâÂÂs original German language (by performative reading experience is here understood as one which, within the framework of the Phenomenology, re-performs a given stage of consciousness as Spirit (Geist) sequentially unfolds itself and comes to itself in time).
More specifically, Mueller-Vollmer considered difficulties encountered in translating into French and English certain German terms such as meinen (to mean, intend, opine, think) Hegel used in the initial chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit to present the pre-linguistic phase of consciousness known as âÂÂsensory certaintyâ [Sinnliche Gewissheit]. Mueller-Vollmer also queried how language could adequately linguistically perform a presentation of consciousness formed at a pre-linguistic stage, or, even assuming language could do so, which language (e.g. German? French? English?) philosophy could then best employ to properly present the state of mind experienced in pre-linguistic sensory certainty within the overall self-presenting (self-performing) framework of the Phenomenology. (According to Mueller-Vollmer, in reading the Phenomenology the reader adopts or re-lives in turn, chapter by chapter, the forms of consciousness as consciousness moves through its evolving stages from sensory certainty at the outset to art, religion and philosophy at the end).
Within the broader dimensions of his work in philosophy, hermeneutics and literary theory Mueller-Vollmer researched issues concerning cultural transfer and translation â how understanding between different cultures may be achieved and their concepts, values, world views and literature shared cross-culturally and internationally. Towards that end Mueller-Vollmer participated in various conferences at the University of Göttingen on the internationality of national literature in the Americas and focused on, among other topics, the emergence of an American national literature in post-colonial New England.
Together with Professor Armin Paul Frank, Mueller-Vollmer authored a volume of studies on the internationality of literature in British America and the United States from the 1770s to the 1850s that takes into account both cross-Atlantic and inter-American literary transfers and transformations. These studies discuss how the Americanization of literature written in English occurred whereby AmericaâÂÂs emerging national literature became different from but still connected to European counterparts, mostly British and German. As well, the studies note that many Anglo-American writers, including the Transcendentalists, R. W. Emerson for example, drew inspiration from German Romantic authors and their sources.
With Michael Irmscher, Mueller-Vollmer edited and contributed to a volume of translation studies with an essay clarifying the relationship between translation, cultural transfer, discursive aspects of the translation process, and the formation of a new cultural discourse. The essay considers how translations from classical and Romantic German literature contributed to âÂÂthe formation of the literary and philosophical discourse of New England Transcendentalism in the first half of the nineteenth century.â In noting that a target language may lack a discourse corresponding to the source language, the essay questions whether target languages can âÂÂreadily incorporate foreign works,â as for example in New England in regard to German Romanticism and German Idealism.ÃÂ
In An international Encyclopedia of Translation Studies Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs entry reviews the relationship of translation issues to various philosophical positions regarding language as documented from Plato to L. Wittgenstein. Translation issues include whether corresponding words of various languages represent the same objects whereby translation would be relatively straightforward, or whether the meanings of diverse language expressions do not inherently coincide because the meanings of individual words are formed within the diverse meaning (cultural) frameworks of a language as a whole, and so seldom, if at all, correspond to those of another language. As such, a major issue involves how translation can bridge such semantic gaps.
Another essay on the internationalization of literature discusses how Germaine de Staël's On Germany (de lâÂÂAllemagne), in presenting German Romanticism - its philosophy, theology and aesthetics, bridged semantic gaps between languages, and mediated a Romantic discourse to writers internationally. In considering the mutual dependency of translation and a discourse to accommodate it, Mueller-Vollmer discusses how On Germany takes up the matter of creating a literary discourse in the target language equivalent to the source language if lacking in the target language's milieu.
In Transatlantic Crossings and Transformations: German-American Cultural Transfer from the 18th to the End of the 19th Century, Mueller-Vollmer presents a study of the process of German-American cultural transfer during the 18th and 19th centuries and the role this process played in the formation of an American national and cultural identity, to which the New England Transcendentalists significantly contributed.
This study includes discussions of the key role German Romanticism and its sources played via translated texts and discourse transfer in the process of German-American cultural transfer.
In elucidating how Germaine de StaëlâÂÂs work On Germany (De lâÂÂAllemagne) helped to introduce German Romanticism into France and America, Mueller-VollmerâÂÂs study discusses how this transfer played an important role in the formation of American national and cultural identity, to which the New England Transcendentalists made significant contributions. His study also considers how a systematic discourse theory of translation might be developed according to which a state of affairs spoken about and the language which speaks of it form an indissoluble unity. As such, not language in general but individual languages as actually spoken and written are involved. The essay considers how in the translating process discourse formation must occur when the target language lacks a discourse corresponding to the source language, for example as occurred when Germaine de Staël introduced German literary, philosophical and theological discourse into France.