Peter Bernhard Wilhelm Heine, better known as Wilhelm (or William) Heine (January 30, 1827 in Dresden – October 5, 1885 in Lößnitz near Dresden) was a German-American artist, world traveller and writer as well as an officer during the American Civil War. 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 Zentralamerika. While in Washington, he met President Millard Fillmore and Commodore Matthew Perry, and was selected from among several scores 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; he served on the flagship under Sydney Smith Lee. 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 iconography of the American expedition to Japan which remains an important record of the country as