Research

The German trading company L. Kniffler & Co. was founded in Nagasaki in 1859. It was the largest German trading house in Japan in the 19th century and one of the first Euro-American trading houses to settle in Japan after the isolation policy was abondoned. The business correspondence of L. Kniffler & Co. comprises 156 letters in German, English, French and Dutch, which various business partners in Asia and Europe sent to L. Kniffler & Co. between 1859 and 1876. The letters have been made searchable by keywords such as sender, description of goods, company names, places etc. in order to enable targeted academic work with the sources.

Collections

Altjaponica

The Bochumer Altjaponica, or BAJ for short, are a collection of Japanese prints and manuscripts from the 17th to 19th centuries in the Faculty of East Asian Studies’ possession. Formerly known as the “Kraft Collection”, named after the author of the first German-language catalogue Eva Kraft, it comprises 320 titles in 943 volumes (including 32 manuscripts in 99 volumes), with the oldest work dating back to 1622.

Siebold Archive

This archive, also known as the Sieboldiana collection, contains an extensive corpus of materials from Edo and Meiji period Japan. These documents originate from the estates of the German Japan researcher Philipp Franz v. Siebold (1796–1866) and his son Alexander (1846–1911).