Ferdinand von Miller was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 artisan who is noted for his furtherance of bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 founding

Foundry

A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminum and cast iron...

.

Biography

Von Miller was born in Fürstenfeldbruck

Fürstenfeldbruck

Fürstenfeldbruck is a town in Bavaria, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Fürstenfeldbruck. it has a population of 35,494. Since the 1930s, Fürstenfeldbruck has had an air force base....

.

After a sojourn at the academy in Munich and a preliminary engagement at the royal brass foundry, Miller traveled to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1833, where he learnt from Soyer and Blus the varied technique necessary for bronze working. He also visited England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, and after his return to Munich worked under his teacher and uncle Stiglmayr, whom the Crown Prince Ludwig

Ludwig of Bavaria

-Dukes:*Louis I, Duke of Bavaria , Duke of Bavaria in 1183 and the Count of Palatinate of the Rhine in 1214. He was a son of Otto I*Louis II, Duke of Bavaria , Duke of Bavaria from 1253 and Count Palatine of the Rhine....

 had induced to devote himself to bronze foundry work and to the establishment of the Munich foundry as a state institution. Miller soon took his uncle's place, and upon the death of the latter was appointed inspector of the workshop. He soon won for it a worldwide reputation, and for himself a fortune and position of influence.

The casting of the Bavaria statue

Bavaria statue

Bavaria is the name given to a monumental, bronze sand-cast 19th-century statue in Munich, southern Germany. It is a female personification of the Bavarian homeland, and by extension its strength and glory....

 (1844–55) especially brought him fame. Commissions came to him from far and near. He cast the statue of Herder

Johann Gottfried Herder

Johann Gottfried von Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.-Biography:...

, and the double statue of Goethe and Schiller, for Weimar

Weimar

Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...

, and also the figures of Duke Eberhard in Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

, of Berzelius

Jöns Jakob Berzelius

Jöns Jacob Berzelius was a Swedish chemist. He worked out the modern technique of chemical formula notation, and is together with John Dalton, Antoine Lavoisier, and Robert Boyle considered a father of modern chemistry...

 in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

 and two Washington monuments, by Mills in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 and Crawford in Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...

. He also cast the gate of the Capitol

Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.

Capitol Hill, aside from being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues...

 in Washington. In 1874 Miller was elected to the directorate of the society of art industries. The Munich exhibition of art and crafts in 1876 was reportedly largely Miller's work. He sought to win over artists to a general exhibition of German art in alliance with handicrafts. Drawing rooms, cabinets, boudoirs, sitting rooms and chapels were arranged so as to form in their grouping a whole by having art and trade appliances put into the place for which they were intended. Where this was not possible, a partition or a wall would be placed with picturesque effect in some adjoining room. Miller established a center of exhibition and sale for the society, and procured himself a home especially for the social intercourse of artists and art craftsmen.

In 1840 he married Anna Pösl (1815–1890), daughter of the Chancellor of the regional government of Landshut

Landshut

Landshut is a city in Bavaria in the south-east of Germany, belonging to both Eastern and Southern Bavaria. Situated on the banks of the River Isar, Landshut is the capital of Lower Bavaria, one of the seven administrative regions of the Free State of Bavaria. It is also the seat of the...

, who bore him 14 children. He died in Munich, and was buried in the Alter Südfriedhof

Alter Südfriedhof

The Alter Südfriedhof is a cemetery in Munich, Germany. It was founded by Duke Albrecht V as a plague cemetery in 1563 about half a kilometer south of the Sendlinger Gate between Thalkirchner and Pestalozzistraße.-History:...

 in the same city.

Ferdinand von Miller (the younger) and Oskar von Miller

Ferdinand von Miller's son Ferdinand

Ferdinand Freiherr von Miller

Ferdinand Miller, from 1875 von Miller and from 1912 Freiherr von Miller was a ore caster, sculptor and direktor of the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich...

 (1842–1929) followed in his father's footsteps and is known in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 for some of the figures on the Tyler Davidson Fountain

Tyler Davidson Fountain

The Tyler Davidson Fountain is a statue and fountain located in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is regarded as the city's symbol and one of the area's most-visited attractions. It was dedicated in 1871 and is the centerpiece of Fountain Square, a hardscape plaza at the corner of 5th and Vine Streets in the...

 in Cincinnati (at the unveiling on October 6, 1871, at which he was honored) . He also created the statues of Shakespeare, Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

 and Alexander von Humboldt

Alexander von Humboldt

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...

 in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 and of J. Marion Sims

J. Marion Sims

J. Marion Sims, born James Marion Sims was a surgical pioneer, considered the father of American gynecology. Modern historians argue about his legacy as Sims used slaves as experimental subjects.-Early career:...

 in New York. Another son of Ferdinand von Miller was Oskar von Miller

Oskar von Miller

Oskar von Miller was a German engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum, a large museum of technology and science....

, who became an engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum

Deutsches Museum

The Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of technology and science, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association...

, Munich.

Sources

cites:

• • Pecht, Geschichte der Münchener Kunst (Munich, 1888);
  • Müller, Universal-Handbuch von München;