Friedrich Müller (linguist)

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This article is about the German linguist. For the German scholar of comparative religion and linguistics, see Friedrich Max Müller.

Friedrich Müller (1834-1898) was a German linguist who originated the term Hamito-Semitic languages, in relation with Afro-Asiatic languages.

According to the classification of the late Professor Friedrich Müller (1834-98), of the University of Vienna, followed by Dr. Robert Needham Cust (1821-1909), the main groups are: (1) The Semitic; (2) the Hamitic; (3) the Nuba-Fula; (4) the Nigerian or Negro languages; (5) the Bantu; and (6) the Hottentot-Bushman.[1].

The prominent German zoologist Ernst Haeckel mentioned Müller when he formulated his own (racist) theory about higher and lower races:

The Caucasian, or Mediterranean man (Homo Mediterraneus), has from time immemorial been placed at the head of all the races of men, as the most highly developed and perfect. It is generally called the Caucasian race, but as, among all the varieties of the species, the Caucasian branch is the least important, we prefer the much more suitable appellation proposed by Friedrich Müller, namely, that of Mediterranese. For the most important varieties of this species, which are moreover the most eminent actors in what is called “Universal History,” first rose to a flourishing condition on the shores of the Mediterranean.… This species alone (with the exception of the Mongolian) has had an actual history; it alone has attained to that degree of civilization which seems to raise men above the rest of nature. [Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation, (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1914), II, 429.]