He was a graduate of the University of Paris and was working as a lawyer for the Court of Appeals in Paris when approached by Samejima Naonobu, a Japanese diplomat recruiting foreign advisors for the government of Meiji period Japan onDecember 24, 1871.
After the Meiji restoration, in 1871, the mine was nationalized, and in 1873 the foreign advisor Curt Netto was recruited by the Japanese government was placed in charge of modernizing the mine.
In January 1871, when Kuroda Kiyotaka was in the United States hiring foreign advisors for his HokkaidÅ Colonization Office, Boehmer was recommended as a horticulturist by a mutual friend of Horace Capron.
He studied economics at the Whitney Business College in Newark, New Jersey under William C Whitney (who was subsequently hired by Mori Arinori as a foreign advisor to teach the Double-entry bookkeeping system in Japan).