Jan Eskymo Welzl
Czech writer
Died when: 80 years 35 days (961 months)Star Sign: Leo
Jan Welzl (15 August 1868, in Zábřeh, Moravia, Austria-Hungary – 19 September 1948, in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada) was a Czech of Moravian ethnicity who was a traveller, adventurer, hunter, gold-digger, Eskimo chief and Chief Justice on New Siberia island, and later a story-teller and writer.
He is known under the pseudonym Eskymo Welzl or the nickname Arctic Bismarck.Rudolf Těsnohlídek began to write down his adventures on the basis of conversations with him.
Pavel Eisner continued but did not finish and later Bedřich Golombek and Edvard Valenta completed the work.The book Třicet let na zlatém severu ("Thirty Years in the Golden North") had great success in Czechoslovakia and also abroad, where people suspected that "Eskymo Welzl" did not exist and that the real author was Karel Čapek, who wrote the preface to foreign editions.
The asteroid 15425 Welzl, discovered on 24 September 1998, is named after him.
