Ludwig Külz

Ludwig Külz was a German colonial physician, born in Borna on 18 February 1875; the source gives his death year as 1938. He was the twin brother of the liberal politician Wilhelm Külz. He earned his medical doctorate in 1899 and served as a doctor with the German Imperial Navy. From 1902 until 1912 he was a colonial doctor in Togo and Kamerun, where he was tasked with dealing with the problem of malaria. The source reports that he used medical arguments such as malaria prevention to justify a racial divide between black and white residents of the German colonies as hygienically necessary, a stance the Atlas records as part of the history of colonial medicine and not as an endorsement. In 1913 and 1914 he joined an expedition to German New Guinea with the ophthalmologist Alfred Leber, and he became a naval chief physician in 1916. His best-known publication is Tropenarzt im Afrikanischen Busch, drawn from his experience of tropical medicine in Africa.