[Friedrich Joseph Haass (1780-1853) - a German physician in Tsarist Russia].

This paper, given on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of Friedrich Joseph Haass, appreciates the life and the work of a physician, who - born in Münstereifel near Köln and examinated and promoted at the medical school of Göttingen University - spent his entire professional life in Moscow.Haass was a successful medical practicioner, a scientist who discovered and investigated mineral springs in the Caucasian mountains, and he became famous as a reformer of the Russian system of imprisonment. Because of his deep concern for the welfare of the poor, his help for prisoners and for people banished to Siberia, he was revered to as the "holy doctor of Moscow". In 1998, the Roman Catholic Church inaugurated the procedure of beatification of Friedrich Joseph Haas.