Background
Ludwig Müller was born at Gütersloh on 23 June 1883.
Ludwig Müller was born at Gütersloh on 23 June 1883.
Navy chaplain in Flanders and Turkey during World War I and pastor at Wilhelmshaven between 1918 and 1926, Müller was transferred to the Military District of Königsberg, East Prussia.
On 23 July 1933 Muller was elected Reich Bishop and in August of the same year Prussian Landesbischof, using his authority to mobilize Protestant support for Hitler and the Third Reich against the Bekenniniskirche (Confessional Church) organized by Martin Niemölle, which considered Christianity incompatible with the Nazi world-view. The new Confessional Church, whose strongholds were in northern and central Germany, opposed Muller’s election and the policy of Gleichschaltung in the spiritual sphere which he embodied. Despite his total support of the Nazi régime, Müller's influence gradually declined and he became a marginal figure after 1935. Hitler never showed much interest in ecclesiastical questions and did not see in Bishop Muller a man of sufficient stature to carry out any far-reaching transformation of the Protestant church or its reunification with the Catholic church.
Bishop Muller committed suicide in Berlin in March 1946.
He became known for his nationalistic sermons and his anti-semitism. Following the Nazi rise to power, in May 1933 Muller became Hitler’s plenipotentiary for all problems concerning the Evangelical Church. He established himself as the leading figure in the Association of German Christians, a neo-pagan church which was an offshoot of the Nazi movement seeking to harmonize belief in Christ with the ‘blood and soil’ doctrines of Nazi ideology.