His career peaked in the German Democratic Republic during the 1960s and 1970s, but he was still making frequent appearances – increasingly, by this time, on the small screen – in film dramas through the 1980s.
Müller later explained to an interviewer that his father had spent many afternoons that would otherwise have been idle at the "daytime cinema" and variety shows, accompanied by young Albert "from the moment he was able to sit up straight".
[3] There was no money for stage school, and the needlework training was evidently never a fulltime commitment, since between 1940 and 1943 he was also enrolled as an apprentice mechanic at a Berlin Siemens plant.
Since May 1945 the remaining western two-thirds of Germany had been divided into four military occupation zones, with separate special arrangements for Bremen (which was strategically important) and for the (former and future) German capital, Berlin.
East Berlin, as the city's Soviet sector was coming to be known, had been home to the "Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft" (DEFA), the first film production company in post-war Germany, since 1946.
[5] Sources differ as to which was the earlier performance, but there is agreement that during nearly four years at the "Stadttheater Senftenberg" Alfred Müller was able to hone his craft through playing a broad selection of roles from the German theatre classics, ancient and modern, including lead characters in Brecht's "Puntila" and "Theodor Maske" in Carl Sternheim's Die Hose ("The Trousers").
[3][4][5] In the words of the commentator Ehrentraud Novotný, this versatile and expressive actor achieved his greatest successes at the Gorki Theatre in "roles of sophisticated comedy with a serious background".
[1] Commentators were also impressed by his characterisation of Phileas Fogg in a 1962 production of Pavel Kohout's comedic stage drama adaptation of Jules Verne's adventure-novel Around the World in Eighty Days.
Müller succeeded in communicating to audiences with irony and intelligence the authoritative calm and engrained snobbism present in Verne's vision of the classic "British Gentleman" of Victorian England.
[1] Moving back to Berlin and, in particular, becoming a regular stage-presence at the Gorki Theater clearly raised Alfred Müller's profile, both with the party and with theatre audiences more broadly.
Alfred Müller and screenwriter Harry Thürk present "Agent Hans" as understated character, reassuringly free if heroic pretensions: he is lovable, clever and brave.
First Secretary Khrushchev's De-Stalinization programme included some relaxation in repression and censorship in the Soviet Union along with the release of hundreds of thousands of political prisoners.
The production of Das Kaninchen bin ich was part of a phase of liberalisation in East Germany so cautious that it went largely unremarked in the west.
By the end of 1965 the direction of travel was becoming clearer, however, and Das Kaninchen bin ich, which had been scheduled for release early the following year, was one of twelve cinematic productions that was deemed "politically damaging" by the Party Central Committee and, in December 1965, banned.
[1] At around the same time, television producers began to take more notice of him and the offers he received therefore came both for cinema productions and small screen films.
In the multi-part biographical TV mini-series "Ohne Kampf kein Sieg" ("No victory without a fight"), released in 1966, he co-starred as the aerobatics ace Ernst Udet.
In a thoughtful performance, he heads up the cast-list as the rocket scientist Dr. Grunwald, who confronts a series of moral dilemmas through his involvement in rocket-bomb development at Peenemünde.
[5] Müller's sympathetic portrayal of the great totem of Soviet-style Communism earned him the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic in 1969 and an intensifying deluge of tempting offers of work from television drama departments.
[1][4] In 1969, again teaming up with screenwriter Harry Thürk and film director János Veiczi, he consolidating his reputation for portraying Homeland Security officers with elements of humanity, taking the starring role of "Major Wendt" in the eleven-part television drama Meeting with the unknown ("Rendezvous mit unbekannt").
[12] The many other films in which Müller featured during his DEFA years include Kurt Maetzig's production of Banner of Krivoi Rog"("Die Fahne von Kriwoj Rog", 1967), Herrmann Zschoche's screen comedy Life in pairs ("Leben zu zweit", 1968) and Roland Gräf's film for young people, My Dear Robinson ("Mein lieber Robinson", 1970).
However, due the transitory nature of the medium, along with the facts that the many plays in which he appeared were those by politically acceptable Soviet dramatists and that East Germany remained culturally isolated from the west through from the 1950s until the end of the 1980s, and except within the confines of "Ostalgie", sources created post-reunification, many of which were published only in 2010, to mark Müller's death, tend to overlook those theatre performances.
At least one commentator bemoans the way in which, even during his seven years as a full-time member of their "ensemble", the "DEFA" film studios[f] had made so little use of his comic talent, and there are indications that this may be one of a number of explanations for his increasing focus on television during the 1980s.
[3][5] In the 1978 film musical-comedy "Hiev up" Müller stars as "Captain Odje", master of a sailing cutter on which he attempts to impose order on an unruly ship's crew.
The production was directed by Joachim Kunert, who also co-wrote the script with Wolfgang Held, the author of the bio-novel on which the television series was based.
Musical stage shows in which he appeared in supporting roles during the 1990s included the 1994 review "Blue Jeans" and Berlin revivals of "Anything Goes" and "Hello, Dolly!".
Alfred Müller took the lead, as Criminal Commissioner Hans Holms whose longed-for retirement has to be deferred, to participate in a somewhat fanciful narrative that starts with a visit from Fairyland of seven dwarves, invoking his help through a series of adventures triggered by the kidnapping of Snow White.
)[5] The series, directed by Günter Meyer was the swan song of the old East German DEFA film studios at Babelsberg, the assets of which were sold to a French conglomerate in August 1992.