Zacharias Wagenaer

Zacharias Wagenaer (also known as Wagener, Wagenaar and Wagner) (10 May 1614 – 12 October 1668) was a German-born Dutch clerk, illustrator, merchant, member of the Court of Justice, opperhoofd of Deshima and the only German governor of the Dutch Cape Colony. In 35 years he traveled over four continents.

Biography Early life and career Zacharias was the son of a Saxonian judge and a painter. In 1633 he traveled from Dresden via Hamburg to Amsterdam. There he worked for Willem Blaeu. Within a year he enlisted as a soldier in the armed forces of the Dutch West India Company to serve in "New Holland" (Dutch Brazil) in 1634. Three years later, he was hired as a writer by the newly arrived governor of the colony, Count John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen. In Recife he kept a sort of diary with 109 water-colour drawings of curious fish, strange birds, useful and harmful animals, lovely tasty fruit and nasty, poisonous worms and big, brown or black people, published as "Thier-Buch". There are pictures of the smooth hammerhead, cutlassfish, slender filefish, Serranidae, and Cirripedia. On 1 April 1641, he left Dutch Brazil, and arrived on Texel on 17 June. He traveled back to Dresden arriving 12 October. In 1646 he became under-merchant and in 1651 merchant. Three times he became a member of the Court of Justice at Batavia. In 1653 he went on a mission to Canton to open up again trade relations, which proved fruitless, due to a civil war after the Fall of the Ming Dynasty.

In 1657 he rose to the rank of opperhoofd (senior official) of the VOC at the small island in Nagasaki bay in the Japanese island of Kyushu, Dejima. He traveled to the capital Edo in a tributary mission and escaped from a burning city, which started on 2 March 1657. (There is a drawing from his hand in the Edo-Tokyo Museum.) In 1659, as one of the first "opperhoofden", he ordered a dinner service, consisting of 200 pieces.