Müller, Traugott

(1895-1944)

   Designer. Müller was an extraordinarily talented and busy designer in the Weimar period. He then began directing films in the Third Reich. Müller's designs for Erwin Piscator in Berlin were exceptional, because they marked Müller as one of the first German constructivists. His designs for Pis-cator of Die Räuber (The Robbers) in 1926 at the Schiller Theater, Storm overGothland at the Volkbühne, Hurrah, We Live! and Rasputin at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz (all in 1927), however, left Müller completely exhausted. He began working at the Berlin State Theater in 1932, and his productions there with Jürgen Fehling in the late 1930s surpassed all his previous efforts. They may indeed be the best design work he ever created. His designs for Richard III (1937, with Werner Krauss in the title role) and Richard II (1939, with Gustaf Gründgens) were among many he designed for Fehling and Gründgens; they were the most stunning of any theatrical designs in 20th-century German theater. Müller's 1939 production design for the Gründgens-directed film adaptation of the Theodor Fontane novel Effi Briest called Der Schritt vom Wege (The False Step) provided him with the opportunity to direct Gründgens in the title role of the highly popular Friedemann Bach (1940).