Georg Honauer and the Counterfeit Gold

in fifteventy two, possibly in Ollamook in today's Chechia. This was when Maximilian the Second was Holy Roman Emperor and the European wars of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation were raging between Catholics and the growing religion of Protestantism. George was moren't just after the High Renaissance, which is

considered the peak of the Renaissance period. The art world of the time was really dominated by three names that you are absolutely going to recognize, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. The Last Supper existed as a painting in George's lifetime, as did the Mona Lisa. While George was alive, Hans Lipacy built the first telescope, and Galileo tried to

explain to everyone such complex concepts as forced inertia and acceleration. Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Copernicus were all also contributing to the resurgence of arts and sciences. It was a time when Holy Roman emperors, including Maximilian the Second and Rudolpho, who both reigned during George's lifetime, supported and sponsored the practice of alchemy across Europe.

So let's pull back for a bigger picture. The time period between fifteen hundred and seventeen hundred saw rapid population growth across Europe, and at the same time time there was also a rapidly growing demand for precious metals, in particular gold, gold, and silver that had been imported from what was then called the New World just were not enough to satisfy demand. And that's really no surprise. But there were two things that could be done. Mine it

or make it. You can even look as far back as Marco Polo, whose expedition traveled through Asia along the Silk Road between twelve sev and twelve and the precious metals that he found even then were precious, and he noted from exploring Eastern and Southeastern Asia, including today's China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and Vietnam, that quote, the quantity of gold they have is endless, and everybody in Europe

wanted a piece. About two hundred years later, Christopher Columbus, who was an Italian explorer and navigator, completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. The first famously in Columbus's contract with the King and Queen of Spain, fernand the second and Isabella the First, stated that in return, he'd be granted a noble title and the governorship of any man's he should encounter, and he could keep ten percent of

whatever riches he found. When he encountered the island that he called Espaniola, he first claimed it for the Spanish crown. The island of Espanola is now known, of course, as Hispaniola. It's made up of present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic, just so we're all on the same page. But Columbus then convinced himself it must be the biblical region of Over, famous for its wealth of gold, silver, sandal wood, pearls, ivory,

and my personal favorite peacocks. It was a lush place and when Columbus determined there must be gold deposits on the island, Espaniola's population exploded, and that's because European settlers increased significantly. The indigenous popula lation was enslaved to search for gold. Native population numbers plummeted as they died from foreign diseases. Likely a lot of smallpox was spread around,

and they were also just killed by settlers. Columbus explored a pretty large area of the Caribbean as well as part of the northern coast of South America. He looked for gold, silver, jewels, and spices, and at every island he arrived at, the first thing he inquired about was whether or not there was gold. If there was gold, he took it. He took every bit he could find.

A Dominican priest, historian, and social reformer named Bartolome de las Casas spent many years among the indigenous peoples of South America and of the Caribbean people known to the Europeans as the Arawak, watching the tragedy of the indigenous populations unfold. As Europeans laid waste to pretty much everything they saw as they hunted for gold. He could only advise with one word, gree, and of course Spain did not have a monopoly on greed, although they probably would

not have turned such a monopoly down. According to de las Casas quote, the cause why the Spanish have destroyed such an infinity of souls hath been onely that they have held it for their last scope and mark to get gold. We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor. When we return, we'll talk about how cost saving transmutation could have been if it had worked. Welcome back to Criminalia. Mining for gold was not going

to be sustainable, but what about man made gold? No matter how the expeditions we mentioned before the break impacted the land and people native to those lands, Spain just kept going, never appeared to pass up the appeal of a golden city. Ferdinand and Isabella bankrolled an other explorer, and this time it was about fifty years before George's birth.

The adventurer was a man named Francisco Pizarro, who, while sailing along the Pacific coast of Columbia, discovered communities with what appeared to be abundant amounts of gold and silver. Pizarro petitioned to become governor, putting himself in control of all those potential riches he'd found, and then set out to seek treasure in the Incan Empire, where it was rumored they used golden pots to hold their golden treasure.

Those indigenous to the lands of the Incan Empire already knew what to do with their gold and medals there had been worked for at least three thousand years before Pizarro's arrival. There were small gold trinkets and personal adornments such as earrings, but over the centuries they began to turn gold and silver into works of art, such as miniature gardens made entirely of gold. Here, though, precious metals were restricted to nobility, but Zaro got around that. He

and his men ambushed and captured the emperor Atahualpa. The Spaniards did execute him a few months later, an action that ultimately ended the Incan Empire. No matter where Europeans looked, mining for medals was not cheap or easy, and in many places there were a few dependencies that went along with the practice. One of those was the development of

mining techniques. There were adequate ways of accomplishing what had worked previously, but people couldn't help but wonder if there were any better and faster ideas for extracting the ore and refining the metal, And the Europeans certainly thought there

must be. Mining engineers in South Germany are credited with contributing European technologies to the America's, in particular, the use of a new mercury amalgamation method to extract refined silver from raw or The method significantly increased the volume of silver production from each mine, and that then that led to silver becoming a major player in the global economy. The technique became the go to practice in the mid sixteenth century and beyond. But if you could make precious metals,

you could cut out all of this hassle. The first lab scientists were alchemists, and for many their primary goal was to convert and you'll hear us call that transmutation base metals like iron or lead into precious metals like gold and silver. And this was not a new idea. Ancient Egyptians, long before George's lifetime, were adept at doubling or even tripling the quantity of the metals they produced,

but it was kind of a fake. They knew, for instance, that by adding arsenic to copper, you could produce a whitish copper that could be passed off as silver. Add a small amount of gold dust to something like copper, and you'll create a metal that appears to be gold. In fact, we have a recipe dating back to the year three hundred. We quote one powder's up gold and lead into a powder as finest flower two parts of lead for one of gold, and having mixed them, works

them up with gum. One covers a copper ring with the mixture, then heats. One repeats several times until the object has taken the color. It is difficult to detect the fraud, since the touchstone gives the mark of true gold. The heat consumes the lead, but not the gold. We just talked about alchemy in ancient Egypt during the Hellenistic period. It was not a European idea, and in fact it was practiced by many people for many years before Europeans

even knew anything about it. Following Ancient Egypt, the focus on alchemy shifted as Islam expanded, and it wasn't until the twelfth century, when Islamic power began to decline, that Arabic manuscripts were translated into Latin, and that's when alchemy arrived in Europe, where it was practiced for roughly in

the next five years. The ideas of alchemy and alchemists permeated literature across the centuries, where alchemists are often referred to as fraudulent or as Charlatan's go way back to the Cannon's Yeoman's Tail, which is one of the Canterbury Tales written by Jeffrey Chaucer in the late fourteenth century. It tells the tale of a cannon. Just so we're clear, a cannon is a church official who is a practicing, albeit fraudulent alchemist. The tail also discloses a recipe, and

we're going to read that one as well. The cannon surreptitiously inserts an ounce of silver into a hollow piece of coal, closes the hole with wax, and puts it in the furnace. The mercury, which was to have been transmuted, vaporizes, while the wax melts and the silver runs out. The practice of fraudulent alchemists and their sham trans mutations continued until the eighteenth century, when chemists were able to demonstrate

how and why these practices were bogus. We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we return we will finally talk about what all this meant for George hone Our, who was executed when it turned out he could not make gold. Welcome back to Criminalia. You thought we were going to talk about an alchemist named George hone Our, and you're right, so let's do it. You're probably wondering by now, how does gold mining on Hispaniola have anything to do with the

alchemy that George hone Our practiced. And it's really just to point out that gold was on everybody's must have lists. So much effort had gone into acquiring as much gold as possible by so many powerful people, and while not seemed to be a concern to most Europeans, so many

cultures have been plundered and destroyed in this quest. An easier way to amass precious metals would have been welcomed by pretty much everybody, and George promised he could make gold with just a tincture and without an expedition to any European colony. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it. Sure, George introduced himself to Frederick, the first Duke of Wurteinberg, first in writing, then in person as Lord Brunhoff and

grub Shots in Moravia, and he claimed to be an alchemist. Intrigued, the Duke called for George to show him an example of his work. George presented one small piece of gold and one of silver, and when the Duke's assayers were asked if Georgia's transmutations were in fact real, cross your fingers past the test. So at least he did well enough to move on to the side get round. So here George seemed like he was maybe legit. However, Frederick wasn't about to back a man who couldn't produce more

than a penny sized piece of gold. He needed way more than that. Next, he asked George to produce two thousand duckets worth of gold from the base metal iron. There was a bit of haggling. George claimed he only had enough of the necessary tincture involved in the process to produce thirty thousand duckets worth of gold, but to eventually agreed on a production schedule and things moved ahead.

It took some pretty considerable effort to bring the iron from the Duke's armory, which was in muffle guard to stood guard for transportation, but it did make the trip, and that's when things got pretty real for George. The iron arrived, he panicked, and so he did the natural thing. He ran away and rest bonds. The Duke had portraits of George painted like today's wanted posters, except painted by

a portrait artist named jonathan's Ouder. Soon lots of people were on the lookout for George, armed with the knowledge of exactly what he looked like. And these fabulous artistic wanted posters worked, and once he was captured and returned, they try it again. But George could only change iron into well, nothing more than the iron that it began. As the Duke was unimpressed and displeased, George was put on trial and was convicted on the charge of two

counts of fraud. Why two counts, so there's no surprise on this first one. The court considered George's claims as an alchemist to be phony, and frankly, I believe we all think that. But in addition to that, the court also considered his claims of nobility to be counterfeit as well. He was to be executed by hanging, and Frederick the First gave the Charlatan a really unusual execution, and it was unusual because the Duke planned every single piece of it,

down to the tiniest detail. When your alchemist is unable to fulfill his promise of creating as much as two tons of gold for you, you walk away from that feeling a little vengeful. The gallows were erected on a stone foundation made from no not gold, but rather the two tons of iron George had promised to convert into gold. It said this special treatment cost the Duke around three thousand Dutch guilders, and I imagine though, that he did

not care. No vengeance has no price. George hon Nour was executed by order of Duke Frederick the First on April second. On the day of his execution, George, who was only twenty five, was walked dressed in a golden garment covered entirely with gold tinsel to the scaffold. Again, all of these strange details were carried out according to the very exacting specifications of Frederick, who was still very

angry about the whole thing. The specially built iron gallows remained standing after the execution as a deterrent to others, an advertisement of sorts as to what would happen to you if you were a so called gold maker and a swindler. It actually wouldn't be until the nineteenth century that the possibility of man made gold was conclusively disproved by scientific evidence, But in the meantime, Frederick kept his

fingers crossed. His iron gallows went on to be used, actually several more times, and it was often also for the execution of other unsuccessful gold makers. But when it comes to those gold makers, we aren't sure if they also were forced to wear the goal. So I hear that we have a very lovely drink for George's story. Oh yes, the cauldron is brewing, and something very fascinating is happening. It's a little predictable, but not I didn't want to be completely predictable. This drink is called the

sham transmutation. It is so delicious. Uh was so convincing that I'm like, oh, and I don't mean that facetiously. I mean that was the holly voice of convincing. Yeah, these these maybe things that you're like, do they go together? Oh, they do. You're gonna start with an ounce and a half of vodka, three ounces of ginger beer, three ounces of pineapple juice, and you're gonna pour that into like a rock's glass and stir it up, and then you're gonna float an ounce of gold schlager on the top.

I knew it was going to hack have golden there somewhere. It had to, but I was trying to do something interesting with it. So obviously gold schlager has gold flake in it. You want to give it a really good shake before you pour out your ounce to use, because otherwise the gold flake sits on the bottom and you won't get any. And you do ideally want at least a few flecks of gold floating on top of this, so you can be like, look, it's made of gold,

but it's not. Sorry, I'm laughing because you said something along the mines of like, then it looks like gold, it flits to the bottom and it's not. And all I could think of was and so said Frederick the first and right, I mean that's exactly the inspiration here, is thinking about like those recipes where they're like, no, you can just kind of pack it on the outside and then melt it together and it'll it will take in the color. You can just wrap it in wax.

It'll be fine. Now, this recipe also is a little bit of a two fur because there's a bonus version of it if you want to kick it up and get a little fancier. But as you know, you know, it's one of those things where I don't like to invoke or use things that are too difficult to find

or too expensive. And I have used chartreuse in the past, but there is also yellow chartreuse um, which I added like a half to three quarters of an ounce of yellow chartreuse before I floated the gold slugger on the second version of this, and that just adds like a whole different bouquet of things to the whole mix in it. It kind of makes it a little bit like the ginger beer and pineapple and the chartreuse together all become

something different. And then what's really nice is that when you're sipping, if you floated your slog on the top, you get that cinnamon kick when you sip, and then there's this weird bouquet that emerges behind it. I just I'm in love with this drink. I will say, though, something weird happens when you're drinking it, because it's alchemy sort of. But I don't know that people will like

this alchemy. Have you ever been in that situation where you have a cocktail and you take the first drink and you go, wow, that tastes strong, But two or three SIPs in you're like, no, not really. You kind of get accustomed to it. I had the strange experience that this went the other way. I have never had this experience before in my life. Heaven only knows. It could be unique to me and like something else that was going on. But like I had the first several

SIPs and I was like, this is amazing. I truly truly do love it. And then like I had, you know, I put it down and worked. I was typing and I did some sentences and I took a couple more SIPs and I was like, this tastes stronger than it did. Your husband's like I didn't do it. He's like standing back there with the bottle of PA. No he was not, he was not even in the room at the time. It was a very strange experience. But I loved it, just the same for the mock tail. On this one,

it's pretty easy. You won't we won't involve that char true step because it's really hard to replicate your truth. But this is also a very delicious libation on its own, which is obviously you're going to leave out the vodkas. So if you just do your three ounces of ginger beer, you're three ounces of pineapple juice, and then in lieu of the gold Schlager to get that cinnamon taste, you're

gonna use cinnamon syrup instead. Yeah, here's the thing with both of these, it's gonna actually be hard to get a good float on it because you're gold Schlagger as a liquor is heavier than most of the other things. It's a little more buoyant in the gold slagger version than the cinnamon syrup version because it's not quite as as thick and the gold flakes will still stay on top. But when you do the cinnamon syrup version, you're just gonna have to mix it in. It's not gonna float

very well. The other thing is, if anybody is like, I'm going to go shop for cinnamon syrup, you can, But if it's hard to find. It's easy to make. You can like boil four or five sticks of cinnamon with two cups of water on your stove, pull out the cinnamon sticks, and then add a cup and a half to two cups of sugar. You get great cinnamon syrup.

It's fabulous. All of these syrups are always so so easy to make, and I never think about it, but it's always so difficult for me to find even some of the alcohols that have really taken to just making the syrups. They're so fast. And also that's a handy thing to be able to make and have on hand because you can add it to you like you can use that in lieu of maple syrup on breakfast things. You can add it to other drinks. I like a little bit added to just a regular diet coke once

in a while, all kinds of yummyness. Highly recommend making your own syrup, and I hope that you enjoy the sham transmutation if you try it. It's a fun one. It combines things that like they go together perfectly fine. But I don't often think like I want to put cinnamon in my pineapple, but it works perfectly right, when you start out and you've got vodka, ginger beer, pineapple, you're like, yeah, I see where this is going. And then it doesn't go there, totally different places because because

it transmutation. Yeah, yes, totally got it. So yummy. We hope you try it, and if you do, we hope you love it. And we just want to say thanks for hanging out with us again today and every time you have, and we will meet you right back here, both with the story and with something from the Cauldron next week. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio

in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.