A lithograph n° 30, titled ‘Nagasaki’, from: Ansichten aus Japan, China und Siam, die Preussische Expedition nach Ost- Asian, Berlin, 1864, after a drawing by Wilhelm Heine, by Lith. Inst. v. W. Korn & Co, Berlin.

 

Coloured lithograph, H. 38 x W. 46 cm

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Coloured lithograph of the cemetery for the Dutch at the Goshinji temple in Nagasaki, after a drawing by Wilhelm Heine (1827-1885) who instigated and joined the Prussian Expedition to East Asia in 1859. In Nagasaki Bay, Deshima Island, the Dutch settlement in Japan between 1641 and 1860, can be seen. The Prussian Expedition to East Asia was an ambitious undertaking. In 1859 four ships sailed under Albrecht Friederich Graf zu Eulenburg, who was promoted to an ambassador extraordinary for the occasion, with on board not only merchants to open trade opportunities in East Asia, but also geographers, botanists, the painters Albert Berg and Wilhelm Heine, and photographers Carl Bismarck and August Sachtler.

The expedition returned to Prussia in 1863. Prussia wanted its part in the East Asian trade, but the expedition also had a scientific aim. There was little success in obtaining trade deals but scientifically the expedition was much more successful. Particularly the paintings by Wilhelm Heine, published between 1864 and 1873 in sixty lithographs by the Photolithographic Institute of Walter Korn in Berlin were of exceptional quality.

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Because all Christian ceremonies were forbidden in Japan, initially the Dutch had to give their dead a watery grave. However, since 1654 the Dutch were assigned a place where their death could be buried on land at the Goshinji temple, but still, they themselves were not allowed to be present at the burial because Christian ceremonies remained forbidden in Japan until the funeral of U.S. marine private Robert Williams in 1854.