Arthur Müller

Arthur Müller (born Aron Cohn: 23 October 1871 – 19 January 1935) was a German entrepreneur and inventor. He became known as the founder and director of the "Deutsche Flugplatz Gesellschaft" ("German Airfield Company"), which instigated, built and then operated the "Motorflugplatz Johannisthal-Adlershof", Germany's first (and by a few weeks Europe's second) commercial airfield.

Life and business Provenance and early years Aron Cohn was born into a Jewish family in Stuhm (as Sztum was known at that time), in West Prussia, a short distance to the south of Danzig. The little town had become something of a backwater at the heart of a region in which the principal source of wealth was the cultivation of grain, potatoes and sugar beet: the Cohns were among a handful of practicing Jews in what was - slightly unusually in this part of Germany - a predominantly Catholic town. He was the third son of Jeanette and Max Müller: there were also three sisters. Little is known of his childhood: sources speculate that the family was associated with a pharmacy shown in an old photograph of the town, which carries on its frontage the name "Cohn". it was not unusual for Jewish families to adopt mainstream non-Jewish names during this period. Müller worked as a sales representative for three major fertilizer and feed companies, based respectively in Hamburg, Hanover and New York. For the first International Air Transport Exhibition, (The "Internationale Luftschiffahrt-Ausstellung" was generally referred to by its initials as the ILA, which at this point stood for "International Airship Exhibition".) It seems to have been during or very soon after the 1909 exhibition that the middle "L" came to stand not for "Luftschiffahrt" but for "Luftfahrt" or (loosely) "Air Transport". Müller became a key investor and in many respects the de facto business leader of the airfield project team. Most of the necessary airfield infrastructure, such as the wooden sheds and the aircraft hangars, audience barriers, ticket kiosks and the spectator stands were constructed by Müller's own company, "Arthur Müller Land- und Industriebauten AG". Despite delays involving the leased part of the site, meaning that a start could only be made on felling the trees on it on 1 September 1909, by 26 September 1909 it was possible to use the site for the opening of Germany's first-ever "flight week" ("die deutsche Flugwoche"). The Minister for War, Karl von Einem, took a close interest, but was slow to provide practical support. However, during September 1909 the minister agreed to make soldiers available for tree felling duties which, under the circumstances, was a valuable and timely intervention. The "Motorflugplatz Johannisthal-Adlershof" opened with a competitive flying display on 26 September 1909 followed by a week long celebration and exhibition. The creation of the "Tagafia" was only one of a number of company formations that Müller undertook around this time in connection with the airfield project, which presumably protected the airfield project, but which also gave rise to a complex and inscrutable network of commercial relationships, over all of which he presided. The years from 1910 till 1912 saw much development and construction at the "Motorflugplatz Johannisthal-Adlershof" which also had their impact in the surrounding districts of Berlin.

Troubles The airfield was a success. Many of his admirers assert that it was only as a result of support and careful financial planning by Müller that on several occasion financial disaster was averted. By the time this rebuttal appeared Müller had resigned from the boards of "Tagafia" and of the air field company, which were the two entities drawing the most voluminous of the media criticism. He successfully pursued a number of further defamation cases against journalists, but the legal processes involved were often cumbersome and slow.

Traditional car bodies, following the longstanding practices of the carriage trade, took their structural strength and rigidity from a timber frame. This was then coated with metal or fabric panels. The AMBI-Budd approach did away with the timber frame. Instead the car body was made up of a number of large steel panels, welded together to form a single rigid structure. A steel chassis, which bore much of the structural load, was at this stage retained. The AMBI-Budd all-steel car bodies were both stronger and lighter, which meant that manufacturers could choose to make their cars faster or to make the engines less powerful and thereby cheaper. The most critical difference involved production technologies. A new car model produced with an AMBI-Budd all-steel body needed a large amount of upfront initial investment in heavy presses and carefully crafted dies to form the ever more complex shapes for the body panels. Once that investment had been incurred, however, the production cost of an individual car body was far lower than with the traditional timber-frame body. Large auto-makers able to raise the capital to invest in the panel pressings could then undercut more traditional manufacturers and so out-compete smaller producers while amortising their initial investment costs over relatively large volumes. During the 1930s in Germany and France several middle tier auto-makers sought to reduce production cost by sharing a single design for car bodies. That included, in Germany, several automakers who purchased their car bodies from AMBI-Budd. One of the first customers was BMW for their BMW Dixi. For the early cars the steel body was attached to the chassis at a production facility that BMW had set up next to the AMBI-Budd factory on the former airfield site. It was, indeed, characteristic of Müller's business approach that in 1927 he purchased a shareholding of approximately 27% in the Adler business, giving rise to a curiously symbiotic relationship which was also reflected in respect of product development, over which the two businesses worked closely together.

Death and burial In 1934 Arthur Müller suffered a workplace accident at one of his properties in the Johannisthal industrial zone. He was already badly afflicted with Diabetes, and following the accident one of his legs had to be amputated. Aware that he was dying, Arthur and Thekla Müller sat down and in December 1934 wrote their joint will. Although they took great care over the details of the drafting, the terms were at heart simple and unsurprising. Their assets were to pass to their sons, Max and Ludwig. 37 days later, on 19 January 1935 Arthur Müller died from his illness and from the after effects of the accident. His son Max, who had recently lost his first wife to cancer, emigrated to London later that year. The couple's other son, Ludwig, who had still been living with his parents at the time of his father's death, emigrated to New York in 1937.