Philipp Franz Von Siebold - Siebold Museums

Siebold Museums

Although he was disillusioned by what he perceived as a lack of appreciation for Japan and his contributions to its understanding, a testimony of the remarkable character of von Siebold is found in museums that honor him.

• The Ethnological Museum at Leiden (The Netherlands) houses the large collection Von Siebold brought together during his first stay in Japan (1823–1829).
• The State Museum of Ethnology in Munich, Germany, houses the collection of Philipp Franz von Siebold from his second voyage to Japan (1859–1862) and a letter of Siebold to King Ludwig I in which he urged the monarch to found a museum of ethnology at Munich. Siebold's grave, in the shape of a Buddhist pagoda, is in the Alter Münchner Südfriedhof (Former Southern Cemetery of Munich). Also the name of a street and a plenty of hints in the Botanical Garden at Munich commemorate von Siebold.
• A museum now stands in a transformed, refitted, formal, first house of von Siebold in Leiden: the Siebold Huis.
• A Siebold-Museum exists in Würzburg, Germany.
• Nagasaki, Japan, pays tribute to von Siebold by housing the Siebold Memorial Museum on property adjacent to von Siebold's former residence in the Narutaki neighborhood. The first museum dedicated to a non-Japanese in Japan.

His collections laid the foundation for the ethnographic museums of Munich and Leiden. Alexander von Siebold, his son to his European wife, donated much of the material left behind after von Siebold's death in Würzburg to the British Museum in London. The Royal Scientific Academy of St. Petersburg purchased 600 colored plates of the Flora Japonica.

His other son Heinrich (Henry) von Siebold (1852–1908), continued part of his father's research. As well, he is recognized together with Edward S. Morse as one of the founders of modern archaeological efforts in Japan.