the health system of this administrative region. His office was in Speyer from where he did an excellent job supervising physicians, hospitals and pharmacies all over the region until his retirement in 1875. Although he did not have a surgery of his own, he treated friends and relatives, and also poor people in his neighbourhood. He had good contacts to German physicians, e. g. Rudolf Virchow in Würzburg, which may have been the reason for the facht that the 36th congress of German physicians and scientists in the summer of 1861 was held in Speyer. Joseph Heine and his father When Johann Georg Heine left Würzburg and his family in 1829 to settle in the Netherlands it must have been shocking for his son Joseph. When Johann Georg wanted him to take over a hospital in Brussels he rejected the offer and rather completed his medical education in other European cities. He was greatly concerned when he learned about his father's efforts in branches of medicine he was not qualified for. There was only one meeting of father and son in 1838, shortly before the father's death. Johann Georg was already very sick and Joseph wanted to help him. However, he had to realize that his father stubbornly insisted on curing himself with dubious methods. In a publication four years later, Joseph Heine harshly criticized his father for leaving his family and for trying unscholarly methods of medical treatment, but also praised his merits as an outstanding orthopedist. Joseph Heine and Anselm Feuerbach Besides numerous friendships with prominent contemporaries, such as the Bavarian minister Theodor von Zwehl (1800–1875), publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta and philosopher and historian Peter Ernst von Lasaulx Heine had a particularly close connection with the Feuerbach family. Heine had known and admired Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach, the mathematician, since his student years. After Karl's death Heine was good friends with the elder brother Joseph Anselm Feuerbach, who taught archeology in Freiburg. Joseph Heine soon recognized the artistic talent of his friend's son Anselm Feuerbach and tried to encourage and support him. His and von Zwehl's attempt to send the young painter to Wilhelm von Kaulbach in Munich was a failure: in 1850 Feuerbach went to Antwerp instead. On his way through, Anselm visited Heine in Germersheim, to "get money for the journey out of him", but, in a letter to his mother, had to admit later: "Heine was