Nikolaus Müller was born 5 November 1809 in Langenau, near Ulm, in Baden-Württemberg.
He died 14 August 1875 in New York City.
In 1823 he was apprenticed to a printer, and after learning this trade thoroughly he established himself in Stuttgart. Many of his poems appeared over 1834-1837 in the journal Morgenblatt, under the heading “Lieder eines Autodidakten”; these were collected and published as Lieder in 1837. Müller “participated zealously” in the revolutionary movements of 1848-1849, and was forced to flee to Switzerland. In 1853 he came with his wife to New York, where he bought a printing office. In the period of the Civil War he published “Zehn gepanzerte Sonette” (“Ten Armored Sonnets,” New York, 1862), and a volume of poems entitled Neuere Gedichte (1867). During the Franco-German war he published a collection of patriotic poems, Frische Blätter auf die Wunden deutscher Krieger.
In 1874 he retired from the printing business; he was preparing a complete edition of his poems and considering joining his only son in Lübeck when death took him.
Sources
Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1900.
Hartmann, Julius, “Müller, Niklas” in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 22 (1885)
See Also
Shelley, Phillip Allison. “Niclas Müller, German-American Poet and Patriot.” Studies in Honor of John Albrecht Walz (Lancaster, Penn.: Lancaster Press, 1941).
Knortz, Karl. Aus der transatlantischen Gesellschaft (Leipzig: B. Schlicke, 1882).