Si Mustapha-Müller

Si Mustapha-Müller (born "Winfried Müller"; 19 November 1926 – 9 October 1993) was a German-Algerian revolutionary who supported the National Liberation Front in the Algerian War. At various points in his life, he also worked as a journalist, interpreter, nature conservationist, and filmmaker.

Life Mustapha-Müller was born Winfried Müller on 19 November 1926 in Wiesbaden. He attended school in Oberstdorf and worked as a laborer after graduation. In 1941 he moved to the village of Götzens. In May 1943 Mustapha-Müller was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo in Innsbruck. The Gestapo transferred him to the Reich Labor Service; he was later transferred to the Kriegsmarine. After this, Mustapha-Müller worked for the SED in Wiesbaden, but ran afoul of party officials, being accused of being a Titoist. In Worms, he met Sonja Klare.

In 1954, Mustapha-Müller traveled to Paris, where he became a sympathizer of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). He then began to assist the FLN with their underground activities in Metropolitan France. His involvement with the FLN was discovered by French authorities and he was ordered to leave the country before the end of 1956. In order to continue his work with the FLN, he left for Morocco in the fall of 1956. After his arrival in Morocco, Mustapha-Müller initially had difficulty finding a place in the FLN. While working as an interpreter during the interrogation of deserted Foreign Legionnaires, he devised the idea of using psychological warfare against soldiers of the French Foreign Legion. The inspiration for this plan was Mustapha-Müller's work with the National Committee for a Free Germany during the Second World War, in which they used psychological warfare against Wehrmacht soldiers. The organization's headquarters were located in a villa in Tétouan, Morocco. The repatriation project was a great success, assisting in the desertion of 4,111 legionnaires over its six years of operation. These included an assassination attempt in Meknes in 1957, a letter bomb attack in March 1960; and being fired at with a submachine gun in Frankfurt. After his time in Djudjura National Park, Mustapha-Müller was inspector general of all Algerian national parks from 1983 to 1986. His last official position was as director of another national park, Tassilin National Park, from 1986 to 1988. He then produced a few nature documentary films together with the National Forestry Institute. At the beginning of the 1990s, after an examination by a Viennese heart specialist, he returned to Algeria and continued filming a documentary about the Hoggar Mountains. He died of a heart attack on 9 October 1993 in Tamanrasset. Mustapha-Müller was buried in Tassilin National Park.