The mysterious personage known as the Count of St. Germain arrives in 1779 in Altona in Schleswig, where he makes an acquaintance with Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, who also has an interest in mysticism and is a member of several secret societies.

The Count shows the Prince several of his gems and persuades him that he has invented a new method of coloring cloth.

The Prince, impressed, installs the Count in an abandoned factory at Eckernförde he acquires especially for the Count, and supplies him with the materials and cloths that St. Germain needs to proceed with the project.

The two will meet frequently in the following years, and the Prince outfits a laboratory for alchemistic experiments in his nearby summer residence Louisenlund, where they, among other things, cooperate in creating gemstones and jewelry.

The Prince will late recounts in a letter that he is the only person in whom the Count truly confided.

The Count tells the Prince that he is the son of the Transylvanian Prince Francis II Rákóczi, and that he was eighty-eight years of age when he arrived in Schleswig.