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Potsdam doctor once served as personal physician for China’s former leader

Posted 12/15/18

POTSDAM - A former Potsdam doctor, who served as personal physician to Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, is being remembered with a new exhibit on China at the Potsdam Museum. Chinese artifacts donated …

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Potsdam doctor once served as personal physician for China’s former leader

Posted

POTSDAM - A former Potsdam doctor, who served as personal physician to Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, is being remembered with a new exhibit on China at the Potsdam Museum.

Chinese artifacts donated by Dr. Hans Egon Scheyer and his wife Margarite are included in the exhibit “Land of Silk and Dragons.”

His three children, Hannawa Falls residents Alfred and Marguerite Scheyer, and Hans Scheyer, Clifton Park, along with other family members, attended the recent exhibit open house.

Dr. Scheyer and his wife moved from Germany to Canton, China in 1934 to teach and work at a hospital there. He eventually became a personal physician to Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975.

In another Potsdam connection, Soong Mei-ling made several visits to Potsdam, before her marriage to Chiang Kai-shek. She came to visit her Wellesley College friend Lorena Reynolds of Potsdam.

Dr. Scheyer moved to the United States and started a medical practice on Elm Street, Potsdam in 1939. He chose Potsdam and nearby Canton because there is a city in Germany with the same name, and he had also lived in Canton, China, according to his granddaughter Jill Scheyer.

Margarite Scheyer collected many of the Chinese pieces that were donated to the museum by Dr. Scheyer, following her death in 1944.

Hans Scheyer joined the US Army Medical Corp. in 1949. He returned to Potsdam nine years later and again worked as a physician in Potsdam, retiring in 1975.

“My father was a true Renaissance man,” said daughter Marguerite. Among his other interests were art, classical music, and traveling, she said.

The Scheyers donated many Chinese artifacts from the Qing Dynasty, such as dragon robes, scrolls, silk paintings, and deity statues.

Other Chinese pieces in the museum exhibit are from collections donated by the families of Dr. Freeman Allen, Merle and Hortense Stevenson, Marguerite Chapman, Harris Olhaver, and the Clarkson family of Potsdam. Included are Qing officials’ robes, hats, jewelry, ceramics, carved ivory, and furniture, according to curator Mimi Van Deusen.

The Potsdam Museum’s recent open house to kick off the Chinese exhibit featured Qiwen Lei, Beijing, a St. Lawrence University student, performing traditional Chinese music on a guzheng.

Also in attendance at the open house was former Potsdam Museum curator Klara Lovass-Nagy, who worked for the museum for 35 years. Lovass-Nagy explained she organized and preserved many of the Chinese artifacts.

The collection will be on view through September 2019.

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Performing traditional Chinese music on a guzheng at the exhibit’s open house Sunday was Qiwen Lei, Beijing, St. Lawrence University student.