Alexander von Siebold

Alexander George Gustav von Siebold
Born	(1846-08-16)August 16, 1846 Leyden Netherlands
Died	January 1911 French Riviera
Nationality	German
Occupation	translator , interpreter

Alexander George Gustav von Siebold (August 16, 1846 – January 1911) was a German translator and interpreter active in Japan during the Bakumatsu period and early Meiji period. He was the eldest son of Japanologist Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold.

After his father was deported from Japan in 1829, he settled in Leyden, in the Netherlands. He eventually married in Germany and had three sons and two daughters. After the signing of the Japan-Netherlands Commercial Agreement, one of the unequal treaties ending Japan’s national isolation policy in 1858, von Siebold returned to Japan in 1859, bringing the young Alexander with him. Living in Nagasaki, Alexander rapidly became fluent in the Japanese language. When his father obtained a position as a foreign advisor to the Tokugawa shogunate, father and son travelled to Edo (modern-day Tokyo). As father Von Siebold acted against the wishes of the Dutch government he was told to return to Java in 1861. Before his father left Japan, Alexander was engaged by the British representative Harry Parkes as a student interpreter because of his fluency in Japanese. Alexander assisted British consul Edward St. John Neale during the Anglo-Satsuma War and was based on the flagship HMS Euryalus (1853) during the conflict. He later accompanied the European task force during the Bombardment of Shimonoseki and the negotiations for opening the port of Hyogo to foreign settlement and trade in 1864.

When Tokugawa Akitake was sent to visit the 1867 World Fair in Paris, France, Alexander accompanied him. With the Meiji Restoration, Tokugawa Akitake was ordered back to Japan, but Alexander stayed on in Europe and returned to Japan a year later in 1869 as an advisor to the Empire of Austria-Hungary. He was subsequently ennobled with the title of baron by Franz Joseph I

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