Meissen Meissen Meissen (in German orthography: "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. The "Große Kreisstadt" is the capital of the Meissen district. Meissen is sometimes known as the "cradle of Saxony". The city grew out of the early Slavic settlement of "Misni" inhabited by the Glomacze tribe and was founded as a German town by King Henry the Fowler in 929.
Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky "a gallant German, stupid, comely, cordial". In 1767 Gotzkowsky went bankrupt for the second time. In 1761, Frederick ordered Gotzkowsky to take over the porcelain factory of Wilhelm Caspar Wegely, which had struggled because of the Seven Years' War. Gotzkowsky attracted competent staff from Meissen, which was occupied in 1760 by the Prussian army. A relief on Meissen porcelain was named after him. Frederick the Great took over the factory on 24 August 1763 when Gotzkowsky was in serious trouble. The company is still known as the Royal Porcelain Manufacture (KPM). The "manufacture" was located at Leipziger Strasse 3 and