Yesterday, Jon and I spent the day in Meißen (in English we use Meissen), which is about 40 minutes outside of Dresden.

The city was founded in the 10th century when Henry the Fowler built a castle here during his war against the Slavs. At the time, this was a strategical move because the Germans were in the process of Ostiedlung, or the expansion of the German territories. Meißen eventually became the center of one of the marches* in the Holy Roman Empire as the Germans attempted to wrest the area around the Elbe river from a Slavic group known as the Sorbs (who still live in this area). As the Germans were making their military and political presence known around the Elbe, Otto I, the Holy Roman Emperor at the time, decided to spread the German religion as well and he created (with the Pope's consent) the Diocese of Meißen. The purpose of this diocese, along with the other dioceses that Otto I created along the marches, was to convert the pagan tribes along the marches to Catholicism.  This task was not completed until the 13th century and the dioceses were greatly helped by the monastic communites that interacted with the Slavs. 

Meißen was a poorer diocese at first yet it came to be endowed by later Holy Roman Emperors, when the bishop was not in conflict with the emperor. While I am not sure what prompted the leaders of Meißen to build a Gothic cathedral, I believe that they most likely had the money needed and wanted to increase the prestige of Meißen with a new, fashionable cathedral. At any rate, cathedral construction began in the 13th century next to the Albrechtsburg (the castle within Meißen).

This is a picture of Albrechtsburg (the late Gothic castle, not the original castle) with the cathedral in the background. Since Albrechtsburg had been built on a hill above the Elbe, there was not much room to build the cathedral. As a result, the cathedral in Meißen is one of the smallest cathedrals in Europe. In spite of it's size, it is considered to be one of the most pure Gothic cathedrals in Europe. 

While I took a lot of pictures within the cathedral, these are my favorites. They are from all the main areas of the church (the exterior, the alter, an area where some of the Margraves of Meißen are buried, and the area behind the alter). The alter piece (the second picture) was done by Lucas Cranach, who was a German Renaissance painter. He was an important artist within the Renaissance and other paintings of his hang within the cathedral was well. 

After leaving the cathedral, and just in time too since a wedding was being held there shortly after we left, we decided to have lunch and visit the equivalent of a wine bar before continuing on to tour the porcelain factory in Meißen. The wine bar was amazing and while I do not know what I drank, I do know that it was good. 

Jon must have thought so too because he actually drank all of his wine. After our refreshing stop to drink wine, we continued to the porcelain factory. We visited the porcelain factory because Meißen is the birthplace of European porcelain.

 In the 18th century, Meißen was no longer a margraviate and it was instead part of the Electorate of Saxony, which was ruled by Augustus the Strong. Augustus was a patron of the arts and he acquired large collections of art as a result. He particularly loved porcelain, which at the time was an Asian specialty. However, these art collections cost money, which Augustus needed. In fact, at one point, Augustus traded the Prussians Saxon soldiers for a porcelain collection because he didn't have the money necessary to buy it.

Early in the 1700's, Augustus heard of a man named Johann Böttger, a self proclaimed alchemist. Böttger was imprisoned within Albrechtsburg in the hopes that he would be able to produce gold. He was unsuccessful in his attempts to produce gold, but when he was imprisoned he was in custody of Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, a mathematician who was attempting to make porcelain. Von Tschirnhaus wanted Böttger to help, but Böttger refused him. However, Böttger's attitude changed after Augustus ordered him to help. This was for the best because in 1709, after the death of von Tschirnhaus, Böttger announced to Augustus that he had a recipe to create porcelain and by 1710 production of porcelain had begun in Meißen. The invention of European porcelain overlooked the fact that Böttger had been unsuccessful in creating gold. 

Meißen did not keep its monopoly on European porcelain for long, which necessitated the creation of a trademark, which is shown above. The K.P.M. is no longer used, but the crossed swords is the trademark the Meißen porcelain uses to this day. Even though Meißen lost the monopoly that they had enjoyed, Meißen porcelain was used among the upper crust of society. Aristocrats from all over Europe, and eventually the upper class in America, used Meißen porcelain due to its rarity and quality.

The above is a Meißen porcelain set that was used by the Russian aristocracy. 

Even today, Meißen porcelain continues to be a rare and expensive porcelain. Looking around in the store, we saw many items that were well over a thousand euros. While I would be unable to buy Meißen porcelain myself, it was awesome to see the process of how porcelain is made as well as the porcelain collections that they have. 

After leaving the porcelain museum, we traveled back to Dresden where we rested before going out. Last night was the first time that we went out, and it was a lot of fun. The bars are small and hard to fit a large group into at times, but there are many, many bars to walk to as you try and find a place to sit and drink. In addition, there are a lot of places to eat near the bars, especially the döner shops where they sell gyro's among other things. We did not get back until the early morning and I was surprised by how many people were out at that time. Our tram home had a decent amount of people on it and we were not the only ones walking back to our apartment. It was a great time though, even if I was very sleepy towards the end, and I look forward to trying more bars at some point. 

*A march is frontier between two countries that is usually militarized. For example, medieval England had the Welsh Marches that they used to keep order in the area around Wales and eventually used the marches as a way to invade/subdue Wales. Also, in German a march is known as a margraviate.