Johann Friedrich Böttger was born in the year 1685 at Schleiz, in the Voigtland, where his father had a charge connected with a local mint. He was early apprenticed to an apothecary at Berlin, and here he was initiated into the secrets of alchemy by no less a master--so at least the story goes--than the Greek monk Lascaris, a man who is mentioned with admiration by Leibnitz, and who is claimed as one of the ‘five adepts.’ In 1701 Böttger fled from Berlin--it is not quite clear for what reason--and placed himself under the protection of the Elector of Saxony. At Dresden and, later on, the rock fortress of the Königstein, he continued his search for the philosopher’s stone, and about this time, probably in conjunction with the mathematician and physicist Walther von Tschirnhaus, began making experiments upon clay--in search, at first at least, of a refractory material for his crucibles. Tschirnhaus had already been occupied with improvements in the manufacture of glass in Saxony, and as early as the year 1699 had made attempts to imitate Chinese porcelain.[152] In spite of an unsuccessful attempt at flight we find Böttger, in the years 1705 to 1707, established in a laboratory in the old castle of Meissen. Here, after another effort to escape, for which he narrowly missed being hanged--at any rate so we are told--Böttger, when experimenting on some red fireclay from the neighbourhood of Okrilla, fell upon the famous red ware that resembles so closely the Chinese ‘boccaro.’ This was in 1707. The next year Tschirnhaus died, and by 1709, if we are to trust the statement of Steinbrück, the brother-in-law of Böttger and his immediate successor, the latter had succeeded in making a true white porcelain. Shortly before this time he had been working, in company with Tschirnhaus, in a laboratory constructed for them on the Jungfern-Bastei at Dresden, and it must have been about the time of the death of the latter that the critical experiments were made that led to the production of a white translucent paste. If this be so, it would seem that it was, after all, at Dresden, and not at Meissen, that the first true porcelain was made. It was not till the year 1710 that Böttger was again removed to the old castle of Meissen, where the requisite secrecy could be more effectually preserved. In any case, in the year 1709 Böttger was able to show some specimens of a true porcelain--somewhat yellowish in tint, indeed--to the royal commissioner, and at the Leipsic Fair in 1710 not only was the red ware offered for sale for the first time, but a few specimens of the white porcelain were on view.