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Peter Bernhard Wilhelm Heine, better known as Wilhelm (or William)Heine (January 30, 1827 in Dresden - October 5, 1885 in Lößnitz bei Dresden) was a German painter and traveller.

Landing of Commodore Perry, officers & men of the squadron, to meet the Imperial commissioners at Yoku-Hama (Yokohama?) July 14th 1853. Lithograph by Sarony & Co., 1855, after Wilhelm Heine.

Heine was born in Dresden and studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Dresden and in the studio of Julius Hübner. Then he continued his artistic studies for three years in Paris. He returned to Dresden getting work as a scene designer for the court theatre and giving painting classes. He fled to New York in 1849, following the suppression of the May Uprising in Dresden in which he participated. In this he was aided by Alexander von Humboldt.

He set up his artist studio at 515 Broadway, and soon established his reputation as an artist. After meeting the archaeologist and diplomat, Ephraim George Squier, Heine was invited to accompany him, as an artist, on his consular duties to Central America. Proceeding ahead of Squier, he collected and recorded indigenous plants and animals and compiled notes for future publications. Until Squier arrived, Heine stood in as consul, negotiating a commercial agreement between the Central American countries and the United States, which he delivered to Washington. The record of this expedition was published in 1853 as the Wanderbilder aus Centralamerika. While in Washington, he met President Millard Fillmore and Commodore Matthew Perry, and was selected from among several score of applicants for the post of official artist to the Perry expedition to Japan

After arriving in Japan he made several visits to Edo, facilitated by his position on Perry's staff, as Edo was officially closed to foreigners. His sketches of the city as it was before the foreigners arrived in force provide an important record. Upon his return to New York in 1855 he published several books: a collection of prints entitled Graphic Scenes of the Japan Expedition; 400 sketches which were included in Perry's official report; and his memoirs, Reiss um die Welt nach Japan (Leipzig, 1856). The memoirs were very successful success, and were immediately translated into both French and Dutch.

Then he published a German translation of the report of the Rodgers Expedition sent by the US government to Japan, China and Okhotsk Seas, under the title Die Expedition in dir Seen von China, Japan und Okhotsk (Leipzig, 1858-9) and Japan und Seine Bewohner (Leipzig, 1860). Here he urged the Prussian government to send more expeditions to Asia before the Americans became established there. This was taken up and while in Berlin he received an invitation to join the Eulenberg Expedition as official artist once again, and was simultaneously given a premium to send back reports for a Köln newspaper. During this trip he met up with Mikhail Bakunin in Yokohama, who was in the process of returning to Europe, following his escape from Siberia.

Once back in America he became a Forty-Eighter and took part in the Civil War as engineer captain of the Unionist Army of the Potomac in the American Civil War. When he spent his time surveying and mapping, Heine was Unfortunately arrested and accused of revealing too much information of the Union defense in his drawings. He was honorably discharged as "unfit for service." In 1864 he published his major work, a voluminous book on travel in the Orient, Eine Weltreise um die nordliche Hemisphare in Verbindung mit der Ostasiatischen Expedition in den Jahren 1860 und 1861 (Leipzig, two volumes). He later, he rejoined the army as colonel holding three different commands. In 1865, he was made a brigadier general but was soon again accused of disobedience. He had a short period as a U.S. clerk to the Paris and Liverpool consulates. After the establishment of the Hohenzollern Empire in Germany in 1871, he returned to Dresden where he wrote his last book about Japan, Japan, Beitrage zur Kenntnis des Landes und Seiner Bewohner (Berlin, 1873-80).

• osugi-sakae
• Perry Visits Japan