On Traces of history

     Ernst Müller (1885-1944)

Ernst Müller moves the company to Münchenstein and makes series production bloom

Actually, the plans were very different. But two strokes of fate led Ernst Müller to join the family enterprise. Some years later, he discovers a market niche and starts supplying the Basel chemical industry with tin containers. Business booms and a new production site offering sufficiently space for series production must be found. So, the Ernst Müller Blechwarenfabrik moves to Münchenstein in 1922.

In Kleinhüningen, the family situation was clear for Ernst Müller. Father Rudolf runs the tinsmith workshop. Mother Elisabeth assisted the father and runs the household goods shop. And the plan for his older brother Rudolf was, after his building plumber training, to join the family company and later to take it over and run it. So, Ernst took up in good spirit and motivation his apprenticeship as a fergger at Senn & Co. in Basel.

But then everything turned out differently. First the father’s death. And then the tragic accident of his brother Rudolf who falls from a scaffold in 1901 during his apprenticeship as a building plumber. He is severely injured and dies some time later from meningitis.

So, all plans for the future of the family enterprise vanished in thin air because of two tragic events. Together with his mother Elisabeth, Ernst decides to break off his apprenticeship and to move over to the family enterprise.

At the age of 16, he joins the family undertaking in 1901. Together with his mother and their first employee Mister Neuenschwander, they run the tinsmith workshop. In the 1910s, Ernst Müller discovers a real market niche with the series production of tin containers for the quickly growing Basel chemical industry. Despite the First World War (1914-1918), production is modernized.

In 1920 – Ernst has just become 35 – Elisabeth transfers the tinsmith workshop to her son. He considers that the premises in Kleinhüningen have become too small to meet the increased customer requirements. Ernst thus looks for a new location that would allow modern series production ... and he finds it in Münchenstein. In 1922, he purchases there the production building of the Ackermann company and builds a modern manufacturing line for tin packaging.

In 1923, he asks his brother Karl, who was working as a teacher in Basel, to join the company as Commercial Manager. The personalities of both of them are complementary, and they mutually trust each other. Pending tasks and investments are discussed and debated jointly. However, the final decision is always taken by Ernst Müller alone.

Ernst Müller is known in the company and to the customers and suppliers as a visionary and an exceptionally good planner. Whatever he undertakes, he turns it into money. People say of him that, if he drops a 5-franc coin, he picks up two.

“He was the soul of the company, a great organizer. Without his initiative and dynamic energy, the factory would not have reached the size it has today. His name remains engraved in brazen letters on the company building”: this can be read in a greeting on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Ernst Müller Blechwarenfabrik in Münchenstein.

He was a passionate sports fisherman and he purchased, shortly before the Second World War, a property at the Sempachersee lake, where he could cultivate his hobby and find relaxation. He built a beautiful villa for himself and his family in Arlesheim. But he was not allowed to enjoy his sunset years He died in 1944 at the age of only 59.