Muth attended the
gymnasium in Worms from 1877 to 1881. With the intention of becoming a missionary, he attended the school of the
Steyler Missionaries from 1882 to 1884 and the missionary school in
Algiers of the
White Fathers from 1884 to 1885. He undertook military service in
Mainz in 1890 and 1891, then studied for a year at the
University of Berlin, taking classes in philosophy, history, and literature. He studied history and art in
Paris (1892–1893) and
Rome (1893), began writing for the
Mainzer Journal, and befriended
Georges Goyau. In 1894, he became editor at the newspaper
Der Elsässer in
Strasbourg, and he married Anna Thaler from
Fulda in the same year. From 1895 to 1902 he worked as editor at the Catholic monthly family magazine
Alte und Neue Welt. Prompted by a public debate over the "inferiority of German Catholics," Muth began publishing on Catholic literature; furthermore, he began to call for an end to the confessionalism that remained from the
Kulturkampf, with its attendant narrow-minded morality, apathy, and prudery. Under the influence of
Martin Deutinger, he emphasized the interaction between religion and art and maintained that a decrease in religious awareness also entailed a decrease in art's creativity. Muth's main accomplishment was founding and then editing
Hochland, a magazine with a "supraconfessional" group of contributors, writing on sciences, poetry, arts, and music. The magazine soon attained a leading status in Catholic spiritual life. During
World War I, he defended German culture, and after the war
Hochland attacked the primitivism and nihilism of
Nazism; throughout the 1930s the magazine spoke out, partly covertly, against the perversion of (Christianity-derived) justice and the destruction of societal order. After
Hochland was definitively banned in 1941, Muth successfully managed to avoid being arrested in connection with the
White Rose. He died alone in a hospital in Bad Reichenhall. ==Patriotism and Christianity==