Johann Friedrich Böttger (born 1682 in Schleiz, died 1719 in Dresden) was a very ambivalent personality. Due to his youthful folly, he became involved in alchemy in Berlin, which cannot absolve him of some responsibility for his subsequent tragic fate. After fleeing to Saxony, the young apothecary had to spend years as a prisoner of King and Elector Augustus II, engaging in dubious research on the production of artificial gold. By chance, in collaboration with mining expert G. Pabst von Ohain and scientist E.W. von Tschirnhaus, Böttger rediscovered the so-called red porcelain of the Chinese in 1706. With the latter's assistance in the production of white porcelain, the research community succeeded in inventing "white gold" by the end of 1707. Since then, the name Johann Friedrich Böttger has been inextricably linked to this achievement.