Wilhelm Heine 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 - American artist , world traveller and writer . Early life . Heine was born in Dresden , the son of Ferdinand Heine , a comedian engaged at the Dresden Court Theatre . His family connections included composer Richard Wagner , whose father had been a family friend . Heine 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 . Career . 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 Japan . Nominally attached to Perry ' s expedition as an Acting Master ' s Mate in the United States Navy , Heine visited Okinawa , the Bonin Islands , Yokohama , Shimoda and Hakodate during 1853 and 1854 ( Edo , however , remained closed to the members of the American expedition , and Heine was not to visit the city until 1860 , when he returned to Japan as a member of the Prussian Expedition ) . The sketches he produced of the places he visited and the people he encountered there , together with the daguerreotypes taken by his colleague Eliphalet Brown Jr . , formed the basis of an official iconograhy of the American expedition to Japan which remains an important record of the country as it was before the foreigners arrived in force . 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 , and were immediately translated into both French and Dutch . Germany . 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 . America . 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 nördliche 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 , Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Landes und seiner Bewohner " ( Berlin , 1873 – 80 ) .