Dresden Green Diamond

The Dresden Green Diamond, also of Green Dresden, with 41 carats ( 8.2 g ) of the largest cut, naturally green diamond. He is pendeloqueförmig faceted and polished. Its bright apple green color comes from the fact that the diamond was exposed in the reservoir of natural radioactivity.

He is to Dresden, the former electoral and royal residence and today's capital of the Free State of Saxony, and was named by the Saxon Elector and Polish King August III. bought. He was one of the treasures of the former treasury of the Wettin princes and counts today for the existence of the Green Vault in Dresden, the most comprehensive baroque treasure and Kunstkammer Europe.

The Dresden Green diamond can be seen in the New Green Vault in Dresden Castle.

History

Its origin is in India, other sources, also in Brazil, suspected. Historically, it can be traced back to 1722 to London, where he ( 23.9 g) was cut from a rough diamond with 119.5 carats. In the years 1741 or 1742 bought Elector and King August III. the diamond at the Easter fair in Leipzig. The stone was purchased by the Dutch expensive diamond dealer Delles. The purchase price is said to have amounted to 400,000 dollars, but this is not guaranteed documented.

Court goldsmith Johann Friedrich Dinglinger, son of the famous Johann Melchior Dinglinger the stone worked into an Order of the Golden Fleece. Hofjuwelier Franz Michael Diespach made ​​at the direction of Friedrich August I in 1768 from the order two pieces of jewelery. One of them was a hat brim with the green diamonds, two large diamonds of 6.3 carats and 19.3 and 411 medium-sized and small diamonds, one grouped to a 14.1 cm high clasp. This Hutschmuck became part of the Saxon crown jewels.

The longest period of his absence from Dresden was from 1945 until 1958 when he was taken to the Soviet Union after the Second World War as a war booty.