where today a plate
commemorates the fact. Negotiations went on, while winter was approaching and the mission stayed there
under not very comfortable conditions. The negotiations were overshadowed by the suicide of a key person
on the Japanese side, Hori Oribe no Sho, apparently in protest against the proposed treaty, and by the murder
of Heusken, the Dutch interpreter, who had helped the German mission. On 24 January 1861 a treaty was
concluded, although von Eulenburg did not succeed in including Prussia’s partners within the Zollverein or
the independent Hansa cities of Hamburg and Bremen. A member of the mission, Maximilian von Brandt,
returned later as first envoy to the Japanese government in Edo.