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.
Vienna porcelain Ottoman Empire continued, by the 1860s the factory was suffering from increased competition from Bohemian factories in particular, and was eventually closed by the Austrian parliament in 1864, with the moulds and other equipment being given to the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. The wares are sometimes called "old Vienna" (or "Alt Wien" in German). The name was revived in 1923 with the foundation of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory Augarten. Wares were hard-paste porcelain, and always of very high quality. Like most factories in the German-speaking world, it was founded with expertise provided by key workers enticed from Meissen porcelain,