Kure, Shūzō: Philipp Franz von Siebold: Leben und Werk. Deutsche, wesentlich vermehrte und ergänzte Ausgabe, bearbeitet von Friedrich M. Trautz. Herausgegeben von Hartmut Walravens (Kure, Shūzō: Philipp Franz von Siebold: Life and Works (German translation from the Japanese))

As the voice of European natural science and scholarship in Japan, Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866), of a Würzburg medical family, set far-reaching impetuses in motion, and imparted his extraordinarily detailed knowledge of this country to Europe. His works as well as the greater part of his collections have survived until today. Numerous publications, concerning Siebold’s research fields and works have appeared in Japan, yet a comprehensive treatment of all the reports of his life and work, setting them in the context of the history of science, remained missing, until the science historian Kure Shūzō devoted himself to this enormous task. His monograph, which appeared in 1926, is still indisputably regarded as the standard work. From the posthumous works of the scholar of Japanese studies Friedrich M. Trautz now comes a German translation of this important contribution to the history of science and culture, which in the year of the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Siebold is presented to the reader in two thoroughly revised and editorially adapted volumes. Volume I detailedly describes and explains the life and work of Philipp Franz von Siebold. Volume II includes the documents which substantiate Kure’s discourse; in addition a glossary, a number of indexes and various bibliographies are provided. The two volumes are available as a set only.