The Arcanum (21 page)

So de Hoyhm granted his accomplice the extraordinary and unheard of privilege of wandering at liberty within the Albrechtsburg
stronghold, allowing him to watch and observe the secret compounding and manufacturing processes that were forbidden to virtually
every other outsider no matter how high-ranking. When, even with this privileged access, Lemaire proved incapable of finding
out the secret, the pair decided that expert assistance was called for. Their choice was one of Meissen's most long-standing
and vulnerable employees—the unfortunate Samuel Stölzel. Summoned with increasing regularity to grueling interviews with the
factory director at his palatial house in Dresden, poor Stölzel was powerless to resist commands to divulge the secret, even
though he must have realized what was going on.

Eventually, however, Lemaire and de Hoyhm grew careless, resorting to stealing porcelain clay for their own experiments. The
tangle of conspiracy surfaced when the captain of the guards in charge of factory security noticed that firewood seemed to
be disappearing from the castle precincts and ordered a specially vigilant watch to be kept. He did not have long to wait.
One night the guards patrolling the lower ramparts around the fortress noticed a shadowy figure and went to investigate. They
arrested a local girl employed as a maid in councillor Nohr's house. She was not, it turned out, stealing firewood but, even
more worrisome, a sack of porcelain clay. Her confession, extracted under lengthy interrogation, damningly incriminated de
Hoyhm.

When the news of the illicit dealing reached the court, Augustus ordered de Hoyhm's arrest and the questioning of key workers
at the Albrechtsburg. It transpired that Herold, as eagle-eyed supervisor of the decorating studio, had known all along what
was going on. But, realizing that the more spectacularly de Hoyhm fell from grace the more he stood to profit, he had decided
to steer clear of involvement in the deception, say nothing and wait for events to run their inevitable course. Now, questioned
over the affair, he was quick to give testimony that conclusively proved de Hoyhm's guilt, after which he retreated to his
workroom to wait patiently to reap his certain reward.

Augustus also ordered a search of the de Hoyhm palace. The guards did not take long to discover a cache containing nearly
1,600 pieces of porcelain—all presumably waiting to be illicitly sold at vast profit by Lemaire. In Lemaire's house, which
was also searched, nearly three thousand more pieces were found. Many of them were unpainted and presumably intended for adornment
in Oriental style by outside decorators in Saxony or elsewhere in Europe. Further investigations revealed that de Hoyhm had
also been dabbling in political intrigue and passing important political information to the court in France.

As a result of this debacle Stölzel, a regular visitor to the de Hoyhm palace, was arrested and confessed that he had been
closely questioned concerning the arcanum. It appeared, however, that the information he had passed on had not been full enough
to give Lemaire the key to the secret and eventually he was released and allowed to resume his work. The archvillain Lemaire
seems never to have lost his sangfroid, and managed to evade severe punishment, suffering no worse a fate than immediate deportation.

But de Hoyhm did not escape so lightly. He was imprisoned in Waldheim Penitentiary, and two years later, depressed and desolate,
after a failed attempt at shooting himself, succeeded in committing suicide by hanging. His demise was graphically recorded
by von Poellnitz: “The said Count being stung by the remorse of his conscience, and vexed to see all his pranks laid open,
chose to shorten the course of justice by putting an end to his own Life.… For this purpose he first pretended to be sick,
and having order'd his Domestics not to disturb him, he hang'd himself the 21st of April last, at Night, with a handkerchief
ty'd to a hook that supported his looking-glass.”

The gravity of the Lemaire—de Hoyhm scandal forced Augustus to take radical action. On May 1, 1731, he paid a visit to the
factory without his usual extensive retinue in order to assess the situation and decide how best to put right the pervasive
rot of the last few years.

Resolving that he no longer would entrust the running of his factory to others, he personally took over its management, appointing
a commission of three advisors who would report directly to him. The commissioners were members of the court who had little
practical experience of the intricacies of porcelain-making and the prime beneficiary of the restructuring was, as he had
anticipated, Herold, whom Augustus now appointed to the role of artistic director of the factory, with the title of court
commissioner.

The fringe benefits of such a rank were enormous. Herold was now entitled to be called “excellency,” a privilege that must
have given immense satisfaction to someone who was always obsessed with social status. He was given a sumptuous suite of rooms
in the royal apartments on the first floor of the Albrechtsburg. In addition, he had the right to attend court, to be privy
to its intrigues, even to demand the best seats at virtually any theatrical production or spectacle he cared to attend. Most
significantly of all, however, he was to receive the ultimate signal of distinction and royal trust: he would be instructed
in the secrets of the arcanum.

The new residence in the Albrechtsburg gave Herold a suitably grand backdrop for entertainment on a princely scale. He had
the rooms redecorated at vast expense—all borne by Meissen—and, much to Augustus's annoyance, went so far as to remove the
ancient stone bench around the walls of the grand hall in order to increase the space available for banqueting.

But along with the intrigues and skulduggery perpetrated by Lemaire, the investigations into the debacle also brought to light
the fantastic sums of money being paid to Herold. According to some reckonings he was believed to be earning some 4,000 thalers
a year—a preposterously large sum even for a senior member of the factory. Herold, it was true, paid the wages and costs of
his staff from the money he received, but these were still negligible compared with his income. A condition of Herold's newly
elevated role was, therefore, that he should become a salaried employee of the factory. His pay was set first at 600 and later
at 1,000 thalers a year, still a considerable sum, but far less than the profits he had been making until now. If he balked
at such a reduction in his income, the important status and the royal apartment sweetened the pill. But his reduced income
gave him no incentive to paint and decorate wares as prolifically as before, and from now on, aged only thirty-five, he hardly
ever bothered to pick up his paintbrush again.

On June 1, 1731, Herold moved into his grand new residence and began enjoying the trappings of his new position. Two weeks
later, on June 15, the Meissen workforce was joined by a new member of the staff, a man who would be the catalyst for events
that would eventually challenge even Herold's apparently incontestable ascendancy.

Anything can be made in porcelain; whatever one desires; if it is too big, make it in two pieces, which no-one can understand
as well as he who makes the moulds.… In this way everything even the impossible can be done in its own way…
and to this I candidly and truthfully attest.

Report by J. J. K
AENDLER
to the Meissen commission, 1739

W
ith every advance his factory made, Augustus's love affair with porcelain became more passionate and his schemes for his porcelain
palace more fantastic. Even the damaging fracas with de Hoyhm did not distract him, and there are notes referring to the affair
with drawings and sketches for the palace, annotated in the king's scrawling hand on the other side detailing the theme and
color scheme for each room. When the scandal was finally exposed Augustus still refused to be sidetracked, and all the wares
confiscated from de Hoyhm and Lemaire went to swell his own collection.

The king had come to the conclusion that the Dutch Palace in its original form was not nearly big or exotic enough to do justice
to his dream collection and a massive reconstruction was set under way. The palace formed three sides of an oblong with a
central court. In its new incarnation it was to be reinvented as a Japanese Palace. The courtyard was to be enclosed by an
extra wing. Instead of classical caryatids there would be gigantic laughing and grimacing sculpted Chinese to frame the doorways
and support the entablature, and the building would be crowned by a crazily scalloped roof.

Inside, the very fabric of the building was, as far as possible, to be made of porcelain. There were to be porcelain surrounds
on the doors and arches; the throne room would feature a glockenspiel of porcelain, while in the chapel the altar, the statues
of the saints and even the organ would also be made of porcelain. The decor in this exotic edifice was to be equally extravagant.
Augustus envisaged rooms with walls six meters high, covered with Oriental chinoiseries that would be encrusted with porcelain
supported on frondlike gilded wall brackets. Every room would be filled with porcelain of a different color, each more dazzling
and breathtakingly beautiful than the last.

The intrepid traveler Johann Georg Keyssler must have been shown the plans on his visit to the city of Dresden in 1730, and
he describes the arrangements with obvious astonishment. There was to be a chamber filled with “porcelain of celadon colour
and gold and the walls lined with mirrors and other ornaments”; in another the porcelain would be yellow and the decorations
gold; the next would feature dark blue porcelain, which in turn would lead to a room filled with purple porcelain. “It is
almost impossible,” wrote the porcelain-dazed Keyssler, “to enumerate the multitude of pieces of fine porcelain both foreign
and home-made that are to be seen here. The culinary porcelain vessels alone are valued at a million thalers.”

The furnishings he went on to describe were of matching opulence. “There is a state bed, with some chairs made of beautiful
feathers of different colors, which cost thirty thousand thalers.” But most amazing of all in this fabulous structure was
its upper gallery, which was to be filled with a spectacular porcelain zoo. It was to be “of a hundred and seventy feet in
length; which will be ornamented with all kinds of birds and beasts, both wild and tame, made entirely of porcelain, and in
their natural colors and size. Some of these are already finished and cannot be sufficiently admired.”

Augustus's demands for a menagerie of monumental porcelain animals presented Meissen with a thorny problem. Under Herold,
painting ruled the day. The shapes of everything from tiny teacups to massive vases and dishes had been simplified so that
the impact of his painted decoration would be heightened. Herold had made sure that inventive modeling and unusual sculptural
forms were virtually nonexistent. In short there was scarcely a handle of which Meissen could be proud, and furthermore there
was no one in the factory capable of carrying out such complexities even if the king commanded them.

Until now Augustus had been content with Herold's brilliant painting and had not questioned the absence of new, more exciting
designs. But as his plan for a porcelain zoo took more definite shape he impatiently demanded that a suitable expert modeler
be found to create the massive beasts he had in mind as well as to increase the variety of Meissen's stock-in-trade. Clearly
only a trained sculptor would be capable of such a challenging task, but the question was who?

First to be approached by Meissen was an exuberant twenty-one-year-old sculptor by the name of Johann Gottlieb Kirchner. An
expert in stone carving, Kirchner could see no problem in adapting his skills to designing porcelain sculptures and sculptural
objects either as drawings or as models of wood or clay. From these the modeling assistants would create molds from which
the finished objects would be cast.

But Kirchner's initial confidence was drastically misplaced—he had fatally underestimated the complexity of the task in hand.
By the time he realized the difficulties involved he had joined the Meissen staff on a good salary and it was too late to
extricate himself from the factory without severe embarrassment. Early trials were a disaster and progress was agonizingly
slow. Kirchner was given a workspace in a corner of the modeling shop and his struggles and setbacks quickly became common
knowledge. Within a few weeks the so-called master sculptor had become the object of scorn among the modelers and apprentices.
He was ridiculed so mercilessly that work became unendurable until, after he complained to the authorities, his section of
the workroom was enclosed by a screen to separate him from his tormentors.

Eventually, after a succession of embarrassing failures, he managed to make a handful of credibly inventive forms—a cup in
the form of a shell, a clock case decorated with figures, a miniature temple with figures for a table centerpiece, as well
as the first large animals and saints for the kings palace. But even then his troubles were not over. Augustus was far from
pleased with the results. Kirchner's animals were too posed, too static and, above all, too dull. They were not what he had
in mind at all.