Joseph Müller

Who was Joseph Müller?

Joseph Müller was a German Catholic priest and critic of the Nazi regime.

He was born in Salmünster in Hessen. He was the youngest of seven children of a teacher Damien and his wife Augusta. Two of his brothers also became Roman Catholic priets. After repeating a political joke, he was arrested and sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof in Berlin. He was executed by guillotine in Brandenburg-Görden Prison.

According to the 2007 documentary Laughing with Hitler, the joke was about a soldier on his deathbed, who asked to see the people for whom he was laying down his life. A portrait of the Führer was laid on his one side, a portrait of Göring on the other. Then, he gasped: "Now I can die like Jesus Christ, between two criminals."

Each year on the anniversary of death, a bell is tolled at his former parish church in the village of Groß Düngen.