A Brief Introduction About Jose Rizal

To help further educate the Filipino American about their Philippine history, background and culture, one very important name must be mentioned.

And that name is Dr Jose Rizal.

The following pages serve as a short biography of Jose Rizal. A more thorough writing can be found in this web site.

Born on June 19, 1961, the fullname of Jose Rizal is Jose Protacio Mecado Rizal Alonso Y Realonga. He died at a young age of 35 on December 30, 1869. The death anniversary of Jose Rizal is honored as a Philippine holiday known as Rizal Day. According to many scholars of Jose Rizal, his death marked the start of the Philippine Revolution.

Born in the town of Calamba and coming from a middle class family in the rice farm business, the Philippine national hero was one of seven of eleven children. Jose Rizal earned a Bachelor of Arts degree honored as outstanding at Ateneo Municpal de Manila. Since Jose Rizal found out his mother was going blind he later enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Medicine and Surgery to study medicine, specializing in ophthalmology. Claiming discrimination by the Spanish Dominican friars against Filipino students, Jose Rizal did not complete the program in Manila. Consequently, he traveled to University of Central Madrid in Spain to earn his degree in Medicine.

Dr. Rizal also attended at the University of Paris, France and later earning his second doctorate at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

In Berlin, he was inducted as a member of the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society while under the patronage of the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow. Following custom, Dr. Rizal delivered an address in German in April 1887 before the anthropological society on the structure and structure and orthography of the Tagalog language. When Jose Rizal left Heidelberg, he left a poem entitled "A las flores del Heidelberg," The poem was both an evocation and a prayer for the welfare of his native land and the unification of common values between East and West. T

The many talents of Dr. Rizal was described by his German friend, Dr. Adolf Meyer as "stupendous.". Well-documented studies show that Dr Jose Rizal was a polymath with the ability to master various skills and subjects, including areas as an ophthalmologist, sculptor, painter, educator, farmer, historian, inventor, playwright and journalist. In addition to his skill in poetry and creative writing, Jose Rizal touched on with varying degrees of expertise, including the areas of architecture, cartography, economics, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, dramatics, martial arts, fencing and pistol shooting.

Conversant in at least ten languages, Dr Rizal was a prolific writer as a poet, essayist, and novelist. Two famous political works of Jose Rizal include: Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterism inspiring and advocating peaceful reforms over violent revolution against 330 plus years of Spanish rule.

Even during his early childhood, Jose Rizal advanced his radical political ideas of freedom and individual rights and as a result enraged the higher political authorities.