Johann Friedrich Böttger (also Böttcher or Böttiger; February 4, 1682 – March 13, 1719) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

alchemist

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

.

He was generally acknowledged as the inventor of European porcelain

Porcelain

Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...

 although more recent sources ascribe this to Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus

Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus

Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus was a German mathematician, physicist, physician, and philosopher...

. Böttger is still credited with the industrial manufacturing process of Meissen porcelain

Meissen porcelain

Meissen porcelain or Meissen china is the first European hard-paste porcelain that was developed from 1708 by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. After his death that October, Johann Friedrich Böttger, continued his work and brought porcelain to the market...

, copied by other European factories.

Biography

Böttger was born in Schleiz

Schleiz

Schleiz is a town in the district of Saale-Orla-Kreis in Thuringia, Germany.- Location :Schleiz is in the Thuringian Vogtland area, an area of wooded hills on the borders of Thuringia, Saxony, Bavaria and the Czech Republic...

, Thuringia

Thuringia

The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

.

Around 1700, an apprentice chemist with the pharmacist Zorn in Berlin, he locked himself up to discover in private the "Alltinktur", a substance with which any disease could be cured and base metals converted into gold. His activities did not stay secret for long and soon he was regarded as an adept in alchemy. When August the Strong learned about this business he requested that Böttger be taken into "protective custody

Protective custody

Protective custody is a type of imprisonment to protect a prisoner from harm, either from outside sources or other prisoners. Many administrators believe the level of violence, or the underlying threat of violence within prisoners, is a chief factor causing the need for PC units...

". Böttger escaped, but was detained and taken back to Dresden. The monarch

Monarch

A monarch is the person who heads a monarchy. This is a form of government in which a state or polity is ruled or controlled by an individual who typically inherits the throne by birth and occasionally rules for life or until abdication...

 who was always short of money, demanded that Böttger produce the so called "Alltinktur" and the convert base metals into gold. Needless to say that Böttger could not fulfil this request.

In 1704, von Tschirnhaus was ordered to oversee the goldmaker. Presumably by involving Böttger in his experiments, he spared him the fate that overtook former alchemist adventurers. Böttger on the other hand couldn't care less and refused any cooperation till September 1707. He did not want to be involved with porcelain which he thought was von Tschirnhaus' business. Only when ordered by the king, Böttger started to cooperate.
In December 1707 the king went to the new laboratory that had been furnished for von Tschirnhaus in what is today Brühlsche Terrasse in order to examine the invention.

Under von Tschirnhaus' supervision and with the assistance of miners and metal workers from Freiberg, the experiments with different clays continued. Substantial progress was achieved in 1708 when two shipments of minerals proved to be suitable: a sample of kaolin

Kaolinite

Kaolinite is a clay mineral, part of the group of industrial minerals, with the chemical composition Al2Si2O54. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral sheet of alumina octahedra...

 from Schneeberg and alabaster

Gypsum

Gypsum is a very soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula CaSO4·2H2O. It is found in alabaster, a decorative stone used in Ancient Egypt. It is the second softest mineral on the Mohs Hardness Scale...

 as flux material. August the Strong appointed von
Tschirnhaus to Privy Council and director of a manufacture which still had to be set up. He decreed "that von Tschirnhausen was to be paid off 2561 Thaler". Von Tschirnhaus asked to earn this title only after the production had been started.

Porcelain had already been known from China and the secrets were later discovered in Europe. However its composition was until then not known in Europe. Its origins date back to 200 BC. One thousand years later the production of translucent porcelain succeeded which later roused admiration and envy in the western world. It was equally valued as silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

 and gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

. That is why porcelain was referred to as white gold.

Tschirnhaus died at Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, in October 1708, from dysentery

Dysentery

Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...

. The continuation of the development was uncertain. Three days later, Böttger reported a burglary into his house to the governor Egon Prince of Fürstenberg. Thereby a small porcelain cup made by Tschirnhaus had disappeared. This report is an important reference, as Böttger himself attests that it was a real porcelain product made by von Tschirnhaus.

Until 20 March 1709, when Melchior Steinbrück arrived in Dresden, the porcelain works were suspended. Steinbrück was the tutor of von Tschirnhaus' family and now was in charge of administering the estate. Among others he got hold of the formula to make porcelain. On March 20, 1709 Steinbrück signed the list of assets before a notary and met Böttger, who suddenly on March 28, 1709 notified the king about the invention of porcelain. Böttger became head of the first porcelain manufacture in Europe. He appointed Steinbrück to inspector who later married Böttger's sister.

In 1719 the arcanist Samuel Stölzel escaped from Meissen

Meissen

Meissen is a town of approximately 30,000 about northwest of Dresden on both banks of the Elbe river in the Free State of Saxony, in eastern Germany. Meissen is the home of Meissen porcelain, the Albrechtsburg castle, the Gothic Meissen Cathedral and the Meissen Frauenkirche...

 to Wien

Wien

Wien is the German language name for Vienna, the city and federal state in Austria.* Wien , in Vienna, Austria* Theater an der Wien, a theater in Vienna located at the former river WienWien may also refer to:...

 and betrayed the porcelain-secret. He claimed that Böttger and not Tschirnhaus discovered porcelain. Also in 1719 the secretary general of the manufacture in Meißen, Caspar Bussius reported: "that the invention of porcelain is not due to Böttger but von Tschirnhaus and that Böttger received the written "science" from Steinbrück".

In a later report from 1731, Peter Mohrenthal wrote: "All of Saxony will remember von Tschirnhaus and his fame will persist forever, as long as the porcelain factory in Meissen is unique besides the Chinese one... Since Mr Tschirnhaus is the first who luckily found the secret to porcelain while the reputed baron Böttger later worked out the details... Because death disrupted all endeavours of Mr. von Tschirnhaus, which the world can not pay for with gold."

In literature

The story of Johann Friedrich Böttger is topic of Gustav Meyrink

Gustav Meyrink

Gustav Meyrink was the pseudonym of Gustav Meyer, an Austrian author, storyteller, dramatist, translator, and banker, most famous for his novel The Golem.-Childhood:...

's Goldmachergeschichten. His name is changed to Johann Friedrich Bötticher.

External links

• http://www.kunstpedia.com/articles/lacquer-painting-on-bottger-stoneware--three-walznkruge-and-the-problem-of-attribution-to-martin-schnell.html Lacquer painting on Bottger stoneware : Three Walznkruge and the problem of attribution to Martin Schnell