2008 - Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

Dr. Ulrich Pietsch, Director of the Porzellansammlung, shows
representatives of the von Klemperer family fragmentary pieces
from the collection
REsTiTUTiONs
The demands raised by the former Saxon
royal family for the restitution of works of
art have confronted the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen
Dresden with a great scientific
and organisational challenge. These demands
related to property belonging to the
House of Wettin which was confiscated by
the Soviet occupational administration in
1945 and may later have come into the possession
of the museums. The demands affect
several museums, in particular the Porzellansammlung.
Hence, all the staff of the Porzellansammlung,
assisted by additional art historians employed
specifically for the purpose, were engaged in
first recording the entire holdings of the museum
(around 18,000 porcelain wares) in the
“Daphne” database and documenting them
in photographs – a task which was urgently
necessary because the last inventory of the
Porzellansammlung dates from the 18th century.
On the basis of this information, it was
possible to embark on the detailed research,
including searching in external archives, and
this has resulted in the production of about
2,000 detailed dossiers. After the signing of
a basic agreement between the Free State
of Saxony and the House of Wettin, this impressive
research achievement – probably no
other museum has ever undertaken such a
concentrated provenance research project –
A short-term arrangement in the Animal Hall of the Porzellansammlung: These 210 document
files – and the “Daphne” computer database – record the provenance of a large proportion of the
porcelain holdings
was handed over to the applicants and will
provide the basis for negotiations.
However, provenance research cannot be reduced
only to the investigation of demands
raised by the former royal family.
Research is also carried out at the Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden into works of
art that were confiscated from Jewish owners
– indeed, in view of their history, the art
collections have a particular moral duty to
conduct such research. The researchers also
search in the storerooms for works of art
that formerly belonged to members of the
aristocracy and came into the possession of
museums as part of the ‘Schlossbergung’ in
1945/46, when estates and manor houses
were confiscated, as well as for “stray works”
from other East German museums which
came back from the Soviet Union in 1958 under
the wrong address.
In 2008 several cases of these types were
solved and preparations made for the return
of the artworks to their rightful owners. The
results will be published in the Annual Report
for 2009.
However, we should like to take this opportunity
to report about a particularly remarkable
case, even though not all the restitution
modalities have been completed. The von
Klemperer family, a Jewish family from Dresden,
had one of the most important private
collections of 18th-century Meissen porcelain,
which they were forced to leave behind
when they fled Germany in 1938. The Staatli-
che Porzellansammlung took possession of
this treasure. In 1991 it was given back – as
one of the first instances of restitution following
the end of the GDR. Thereupon, the
family generously donated several of the
porcelain objects to the museum. Years later,
around 125 further figures and damaged
items from the Klemperer collection were
identified in the Fragments Storeroom of the
Porzellansammlung.
Members of the family have already inspected
them during a visit to Dresden. In the
exhibition “Raub und Restitution. Kulturgut
aus jüdischem Besitz von 1933 bis heute”
(Looting and Restitution. Jewish-Owned
Cultural Artifacts from 1933 to the Present),
which was on display from late 2008 until
early 2009 in the Jewish Museum in Berlin,
the story of the looting and restitution of
the Klemperer collection was documented
in detail.
Finally, mention should be made of 18 porcelain
figures from the collection of Julius
Wolff which were handed over to the Jewish
Claims Conference in 2008.
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