Erwin Bälz

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Erwin Bälz (13 January 1849 - 31 August 1913) was a German internist, anthropologist, personal physician of the Japanese Imperial Family and cofounder of modern medicine in Japan.

[edit] Life

Son of a contractor, Bälz was born in 1849 in Bietigheim-Bissingen. He attended grammar school in Stuttgart and studied medicine at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. He graduated at the age of 23. Contacts through a Japanese patient led to his appointment at Tokyo Medical College in 1876, at first with a two-year contract.

In the summer of 1899, he visited the Korean Capital Seoul and Busan and undertook ethnological investigations. From April 22 to July 3, 1903, he was again in Korea and, together with Richard Wunsch, undertook an expedition into the interior of the country.

He stayed on in Japan as a university teacher for more than 30 years and taught more than 800 students in Western medicine. On Bälz' initiative, the vulcanic springs of Kusatsu (200 km away from Tokyo) were transformed into the most successful hot spring resort of Japan. He married a Japanese woman and had two children. In 1905, he returned to Germany. In Stuttgart, late in the summer of 1913, Bälz succumbed to heart disease.

Bälz was also an ardent art collector, the majority of the Japanese works collected by him are nowadays on exhibiton in the Linden Museum in Stuttgart. A stone sculpture at Tübingen University reminds of his merits for the Japanese medical science. In 1961, a sister city relationship between Kusatsu and Bietigheim-Bissingen was established.

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