Jan Eskymo Welzl

Who was Jan Eskymo Welzl?

Jan Welzl was a Czech traveller, adventurer, hunter, gold-digger, Eskimo chief and Chief Justice on island New Siberia and later 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 this but did not finish and later Bedřich Golombek and Edvard Valenta completed the work. The book Třicet let na zlatém severu 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.