JOHANNES BERAZ

An avid interest in ethnology brought Dr. Johannes Beraz to Honolulu aboard the "Idaho" on November 21, 1869. He was a native of Bavaria, born in 1832, and was 32 at the time of his arrival.

In April, 1870, having completed a tour of Hawaii, he returned to Honolulu and announced he would consult at the office of Dr. William Hillebrand, a fellow countryman. Sometime the following year he moved to Hana, Maui, and began to practice there.

What little we know about Dr. Beraz is to be found mainly in the accounts of his death, which occurred on April 4, 1872. The doctor performed an operation on a native woman in the morning and that evening, after dining with Father Boniface Schafer at the Catholic Mission, he insisted upon returning to see his patient. Since it was dark and raining, the priest urged him to stay the night at the Mission and go in the morning, but the doctor replied that it was his duty to go and added, according to one source, that perhaps he had not long to live and must improve opportunities. As they parted, he took the priest's hand and pressed it saying he hoped they would be friends till death. Whether or not he had a premonition of his death, duty to his patient was his only concern. When he was not heard from in the next two days, a search was instituted and his body found by some rocks at the beach. It was later established that Dr. Beraz had been drowned when crossing the gulch at Kapia.

His funeral was attended by natives from all parts of Hana who mourned his death by saying that they could never find a true friend like the "Prussian doctor". Likewise, the community as a whole esteemed him as a "cultivated gentleman and a successful and humane physician and surgeon".

In an effort to settle the estate following his death, it was discovered that Dr. Beraz was married and that his wife, Johanna, was serving as governess to a family in Hoboken, New Jersey.

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