Joseph (von) Heine (28 November 1803 – 4 November 1877) was a German physician and a high civil servant in the Bavarian health service in the Rheinkreis. Medical career in Franconia and in the Palatinate Joseph Heine was born in Würzburg on 28 November 1803. He was the son of Johann Georg Heine, who was an orthopedist and manufacturer of orthopedic instruments for the Würzburg university. Joseph attended the Würzburg Gymnasium until 1824 and studied medicine in Würzburg and Munich. In 1827 he passed his state examination in Bamberg and did his doctorate as an MD in Würzburg. Heine widened his medical knowledge by a number of journeys abroad. In the winter of 1828/29 he studied dermatology and surgery in Paris. His tutor in the latter discipline was Guillaume Dupuytren. The departure of his father Johann Georg Heine to the Netherlands in 1828 forced the son to return to Würzburg, where—together with his cousin Bernhard—he took over the management of the Karolinen-Institut for one year. In 1830 a "desire for further education" compelled him to travel to Vienna and Warsaw, where in 1831 he treated persons wounded in the anti-Russian rebellion as well as persons suffering from cholera. As he came down with typhoid fever himself he had to return to Bavaria and worked as a physician in Homburg on the Main and in Würzburg, before he applied for the post of district doctor in Waldmohr in the Palatinate. When he was appointed in 1836 he gained the rank of a royal civil servant in the Kingdom of Bavaria, which he held for lifetime. In 1840 he applied for the higher post of a "first-class district doctor" in Germersheim, which he held until 1851. "Political" Interlude (1848–1851) In 1848 Heine stood for a seat in the Frankfurt National Assembly, but lost by a very narrow margin. Although he characterized himself as "unpolitical" his political leaning could be described as "pan-German and anti-revolutionary". His second effort to gain a political mandate was successful: He was elected a member of the second chamber of the Bavarian Landtag. Yet in 1851 he gave up the seat, returned to Franconia and became a forensic pathologist and hospital manager in the city of Bamberg. Government official in the Palatinate (1856–1875) Heine's next upward step in his career was the appointment as "Kreis- und Medizinalrat der Pfalz", a position which put him in charge of overseeing