Abstract

Classical scholarship played a vital role in the intellectual concerns of early nineteenth-century Germany. Situated at the crossroads of religion, history, and explorations of the development of the human mind, Greek mythology in particular was expected to shed light on the origins of civilization. In the search for the true nature of myth, the hermeneutic problems involved in historical understanding were intensified. As myth was held to be of a different nature than rationality, to read the sources was to look for a completely different referent of the texts than was the case in historical reconstruction. In the quests for a scientific mythology, K. O. Müller was often regarded as an opponent of F. Creuzer . Yet an analysis of their published work and of their private documents shows that they had much in common, a fact they both appreciated. In particular they held similar, deeply Romantic views on the religious origin of culture, in Müller's case inspired by Pietism, in Creuzer's by neo-Platonism. Creuzer's influence is revealed in Müller's Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie and more specifically in his interpretation of the Amazons as worshippers of sexuality in Die Dorier . Nevertheless, Müller differed from Creuzer in his views on the relationship of myth to history. Myth was not the reflection of a universal religion, sustained by a priestly class , but the outcome of the encounter between the mental endowment of a people and local, historical circumstances. In the case of the Amazons, however, Müller assessed the connection of myth to history in defiance of his own theory, guided by his views on gender difference and on sexual morality