Adam Heinrich Müller (30 June 1779 – 17 January 1829; after 1827 Ritter[1] von Nitterdorf) was a German-Austrian conservative philosopher, literary critic, and political economist, working within the romantic tradition.

He had early formed a close intimacy with Gentz, his elder by 15 years; and this connection exercised an important influence both on his material circumstances and his mental development in after life.

The two men differed widely in character and in their fundamental principles, but agreed, at least in their later period, in their practical political aims, and the friendship was only terminated by death.

Müller's relations with the Junker party and his co-operation with them in their opposition to Hardenberg's reforms made any public employment in Prussia impossible for him.

Via Poland, Müller traveled to Dresden, where he held lectures on German science and literature (1806), in which he showed himself to be a follower of Schlegel's romanticism.

In 1811 he also acted as a close political adviser to the leader of the Prussian nobility opposition, Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz.

But Hardenberg smashed the opposition: Marwitz was imprisoned, the “Abendblatt” had to cease publication and Müller was deported to Vienna as a diplomatic reporter.

Müller was a conservative writer whose vision of the state was one of an absolute power, in contrast to theorists who emphasized the rights of man such as Montesquieu and Rousseau.

As Eichendorff says in his Geschichte der poetischen Literatur Deutschlands (new ed., by W. Kosch, Kempten, 1906, p. 352), Müller "mapped out a domain of his own, the application of Romanticism to the social and political conditions of life."

"[5] Müller himself declares: "The reconciliation of science and art and of their noblest ideas with serious political life was the purpose of my larger works" (Vermischte Schriften, I, p. iii).

However, Müller's teachings had long-term effects in that they were taken up again by 20th century theorists of corporatism and the corporate state, for example Othmar Spann (Der wahre Staat.

In it, he examines the intellectual foundations of economically developed nations, how they can use their wealth to benefit all classes of society and create a just world order.

Philosophically, Müller starts from his theory of opposites - a kind of early dialectic view that revolves around the idea of mediation and balance.

Several of his works were based upon his own lectures; the most important (besides the above-mentioned periodicals) are: A critical pamphlet, which was written in 1817 on the occasion of the Protestant jubilee of the Reformation and entitled, Etwas, das Goethe gesagt hat.