Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff, pioneer Protestant missionary in China, was born in Pomerania, Germany in 1803. He trained in a mission institute in Berlin and, having met Robert Morrison in London, began to learn Chinese with a view to working amongst the Chinese people. He spent some years as a missionary in Java and Thailand working with Chinese expatriates and he and his wife translated the bible into Siamese. During these years Gützlaff also acquired some medical skill and between 1831 and 1833 he made three trips along the Chinese coast acting as a medical practitioner and interpreter. He finally secured entry into mainland China as a free-lance missionary in 1833, by which time his wife had died. After some disputes with the authorities he took a job as a Chinese language secretary in the British diplomatic services but continued to do his missionary work. Gützlaff was convinced that the way to penetrate China was through Chinese converts, not foreign missionaries. He devoted himself to recruiting and training Chinese evangelists who would travel throughout the provinces preaching and distributing tracts. He supported the formation of a largely Chinese led evangelisation society, the Chinese Union, and appeared to achieve some success with reports of thousands of converts during the 1840s. Gützlaff ensured that accounts of his activities were published in the West where he received an enthusiastic reception during visits to raise funds. It was while he was in Europe in 1848 that missionaries in Hong Kong accused Gützlaff of exaggerating his success and his evangelists of falsifying figures and having a poor grasp of basic Christian doctrine. Gützlaff returned to China but the criticisms and his own ill health led to the collapse of the Union shortly before he died in 1851. Accused by many of being a fanatic and eccentric, not least because he insisted on wearing Chinese dress, Gützlaff has also been criticised in China for his role in the Nanking Treaty (1842). He was, however, a pioneer in many senses. He published several books and articles on Chinese history and culture and translated much of the New Testament into Chinese. Although the Union collapsed it was the forerunner of the Chinese Evangelisation Society which sent Hudson Taylor to China and Hudson Taylor himself called Gützlaff 'the grandfather of the China Inland Mission.'