Frederik Muller

Frederic Müller or Fritz Müller (July 22, 1817 - January 4, 1881) was a Dutch bibliographer, book seller, and print collector. He married Gerard Jacob Intem. Their son Samuel Muller Fz. became known as the municipal and state archivist in Utrecht. Another son, Jacob Weybrand Müller, was to become a professor of Dutch language and literature at the University of Utrecht, and his son Frederic Müller Jones was a professor of Latin at the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University. Müller was born in Amsterdam as the son of Amsterdam professor Samuel Müller and studied at Athenaeum Illustre University. He grew up in an environment with a love of books and science, especially history. His ability for hard work was inherited from his father. It was a trait that he could also very well appreciate in others, while he hated those who were inactive or not very serious. He went to work with his uncle Johannes Müller at Rokin in Amsterdam, who held a bibliopoly there. After teaching his uncle, an old-fashioned book dealer, for 6 years, he opened his own second-hand bookstore in 1843. He was mainly a bookseller (cartography constituted only a relatively small part of his overall activity), a collector endowed with critical and scientific discrimination, and a scientific publisher. His passion for collecting was manifested in his working procedure, with the help of which he tried to collect as many works as possible in one sphere or another, before bringing them to the market through a catalog. Contrary to previous practices, he believed that professional catalogs are good for trade, as well as for science. He modeled the catalogs of his store so that they could operate simultaneously with bibliographies. When we want to know the full depth of his attraction in this matter, we can do it in our own words.